The cool nature of downloading as a medium is apparent in the term “peer to peer”. Downloading demanded active participation of its users, as they are forced to pick the music they want, as well as share what they already have. Two current incarnations of music downloading occur in the form of torrent files, and via file storage websites, accessed either through blogs or search engines such as Google. Both of these formats are highly participatory. Torrent files allow for the simultaneous downloading and uploading of files. Torrent files themselves are accessed through public websites, such as piratebay and isohunt, or private websites such as What.cd, which are invite only and require membership and certain sharing ratios. Music blogs share songs or whole albums, which have been uploaded to websites such as mediafire or megaupload. Blogs are user created websites, which are thus incredibly participatory. The RIAA still attempts to interfer with these methods by shutting down torrent websites and having music deleted from file-sharing websites, but without much progress. There is also the online Itunes store, which is the most popular site for the legal purchasing of music files.
Here is a user-created video on torrenting:
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