After bringing suit in late May, the RIAA and NMPA have just obtained their dream settlement against Audiogalaxy: a strict opt-in system, where only approved tracks can be shared, and of course a huge wad of cash.

The suit against Streamcast over Morpheus is still pending.

Meanwhile, users looking for a spyware-free client for one of the remaining peer-to-peer networks might find what they’re looking for at Clean Clients, which offers de-loused versions of Grokster, KaZaA, Bearshare, Morpheus, Limewire and SongSpy. (And Audiogalaxy, for now-historical interest.)

Update: We hear tell the RIAA are apparently planning to sue someone over Gnutella … if they can find who to sue. Of course, suing the current developers (who are not the original developers) won’t do a thing to stop a fully open protocol with an open-source reference implementation available.

Kuro5hin has a nice history of Audiogalaxy up, written by one of AG’s programming team. Also talks about the RIAA suit in some detail.

(Kuro5hin has some good stuff. Read it.)

In its present form, in any case. The party’s well and truly over, guys. As laid out step by step in a New York Metro Magazine article of near-perfection.

“To a large degree, the music industry is, then, a fluke. A bubble. Finally the bubble burst.”

Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s … 2002.