Mercora offers a means of sharing of music online legally

Now before you get too excited, you can't save the music to your hard drive and you can't burn the tunes you listen too, it's a streaming application. But still, every now and again someone will ask in our P2P forum if there is some way to download free music legally. Mercora is a free application that basically turns your PC into a webcasting machine. Once installed it will scan you enormous hard drive arrays looking for music tracks in Ogg, Mp3 and WMA forms. Then it will create a small, sorted database of your music collection.

You can't always just log on to the service and find a particular song or artist. In other words you can't search for a particular track or song. It is just like a radio in that you can listen to what is being broadcasted. So you will have to learn who plays what you like and create a favorite list. Like finding a favorite radio station. So this is a bit different than normal P2P to say the least.

In addition, your PC becomes your own radio station and therefore you can create your own playlists, so you can try to create your own style or personality. It would be very possible to stream your collection from home to work, to the delight of the personel in surrounding cubicles. On top of that, there is a social aspect to the Mercora Network, according to the website "Now you can actually DJ a party for a friend three thousand miles away! And it's done regularly on the Mercora Network. Just invite your friends, and you're ready to share music with them, chat with them, and create your own online groups. Or meet new people from around the world who have similar music tastes and interests as you do."