I know almost nothing about mIRC, but I hear it is the best place to go for downloading music and the such. Can anyone here give me any sites, or just tell me, how to search for stuff? Before you get all worried, I do NOT buy music that I can buy in stores. I am a songwriter and screenwriter myself, so I know how that kind of stuff can hurt those in the business. I basicly look up for liver performances, acoustic performances, and demo recordings.
First off, a correction and a primer: mIRC is not a place to go, it’s a program that you use to get somewhere - just like you can view web pages with Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, etc., but they’re all the same pages.
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a protocol that IRC clients use to connect to IRC servers; servers are linked into networks. If you’re looking for people to chat with, you go into a channel, which is like a “chat room” on AOL or Yahoo.
The same channels exist on all servers of a single network… one network is Undernet, with several servers like newyork.ny.us.undernet.org and sandiego.ca.us.undernet.org. If you’re on the New York server and you join the channel #straightdope, you can talk to everyone on Undernet who’s in that channel, whether they’re using a server in New York, San Diego, or Europe - as long as they’re using one of Undernet’s servers. If you go to another network (e.g., DALnet at irc.dal.net), there might be another channel called #straightdope, but it’s not the same channel.
mIRC is one IRC client for Windows. There are many others, like Pirch, Xircon, and (my favorite, since I wrote it :D) Visual IRC. Just like web browsers, you can use any IRC client to connect to any IRC server, the only differences are style and features.
Now, to answer your question: most networks have a channel called #mp3, which is your best bet for finding music files. You can also get a list of channels, usually by typing /list once you’re connected to a server, and search for channels with “mp3” in their names. If you need help getting your client set up, or choosing and connecting to a server, www.irchelp.org can help you.