Q: There are so many options, and I'm old school. Will be grateful for any insights.
A: To obtain a legal copy of BearShare with the free and paid subscription service [should you opt for the premium downloads from the music labels], you need to get BearShare 6 by visiting www.bearshare.com and clicking download. You do NOT have to take out the premium subscription if you do not want to. As Bearshare settled with the music industries, they were acquired by iMesh [www.imesh.com] who turned them into a legal business model. Rest assured, whatever you do on either of these programs is legal, as copyrighted material is filtered out.