Basics
The MP3 requests list is useful if you visit MP3 channels. It makes it very easy
to keep track of what songs are available, and to download them.
To find a channel that is dedicated to MP3 exchange, do a channel list with Cmd-L
and enter "mp3" in the Include field and a reasonable minimum number
of members, like 20 or so. You can also use the Find and Find Again functions
to search in an existing list.
To show the request list, press Cmd-M. If you want to remove it you can do so
in the Sound Request preference panel.
Once you've entered a MP3 channel, you will see many messages scroll by very fast.
These are typically requests sent by someone to another channel member that happens
to have songs available for download. The traffic is typically very high, making
it hard to find things and discover who has what songs available.
A typical request is in the form "!nick song". If nick has the song
available, he will then start sending it to the person that sent the message.
The MP3 request list will filter out the song requests that people send to the
channel so that you can also request those songs. In a couple of hours in a busy
MP3 channel the list may pick up thousands of available songs that you can request
with a click of a button.
To specifically search for an artist or song that interest you, most channels
support a "@find" or "@locator" function. Type @find and the
phrase you are searching for and send it to the channel to ask who has the song
available for download.
If someone has it, he will send a private message with instructions on how to
retrieve a song. The MP3 request list will pick up this information and you can
then easily download the song.
Clicking the Get button will send a normal "!nick song" message to the
channel, and if you are lucky the offerer will start sending you the file. If
this doesn't happen right away, the offerer may be busy with other clients and
will send the file to you later.
Most of the people offering songs are running a particular script that responds
to these messages automatically so they have to be formatted just right. The MP3
request list makes that easy.
Most channels place limits on how frequently you can request files. Try to not
send a message more frequently than every few seconds. The list supports multiple
selection, and will send multiple requests to the channel if you do that and press
the Get button.
The songs are sent to you as DCC file transfers (see the DCC chapter for further
information) and it may be useful for you to select a folder for MP3 files and
select that in the DCC auto receive preferences. Then you can turn on Auto Accept
DCC from everyone, and the incoming files will automatically go there.
This is useful because the offerers may have you waiting a while for a popular
song that many people have requested. When it finally gets to be your turn, you
may not notice that the offerer is now trying to send you the file and it will
time out.
Basics
