Twenty-four hours later I had over 200 songs taking up 750 megs of hard drive space. The effort required was trivial. Napster is a free application that makes trading MP3 files almost effortless. When you load the program it connects you to a Napster server. You can then share files with anyone else who is connected at the moment.
Some people only have a few files, others have hundreds.
Typically you'll have access to about a half million files. That doesn't mean a half million songs, because there are lots and lots of duplicates. You search for an artist or song, and within a few seconds Napster presents you with a list that includes each song's name, file size, bit rate, and the speed of the other persons connection. You can sort on any of these criteria by clicking the top of the column. Which has the record companies really, really pissed off.