I was running the free trial of bearshare 6 and was very happy with it. I downloaded tons of music. After a few weeks, Every time I tried to play a song that had been downloaded with bearshare I was given a message telling me that bearshare needed to acquire a license for that song, but the license would never download. I thought this might be because my free trial had expired, so I paid the one dollar to get bearshare premium for a month. I can dowload music but none of the music I download will play.

On the bearshare website it says that the problem I am having is a common one amongst people who have windows XP media center edition, which I have. The website also states that there is no way to fix this problem. I would be surprised if the people at bearshare are trying very hard to get this problem fixed. Does anyone here know what I can do to be able to listen to my music again? I have several gigs which took quite some time to download.

I am having the same problem. Does this mean new computors will not work with Bearshare? I find it hard to believe that this organization will let all of the potetial income disapear because they have not found a fix,

Maybe they're expecting the XP media center edition to be replaced by Vista.
Many computers that have shipped over the past few months come with the
option for a free "upgrade" to Vista when it comes out.

If you think the DRM in BearMesh v6 is a mess, take a look at this:
A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

I too am having this problem. What sux is that it the program was working fine for me for about 5 months and then all of a sudden my computer crashed and I was unable to play any new or previously downloaded songs. It just sits there and says "loading license" which never happens. What sux even more is that their customer service is located in India and "Johnny" apparently doesn't know the meaning of "computer crash" and "unable to play downloaded music". Its funny how they have a live agent talk to you via an instant messaging service to get you to sign up for 7.95 a month and then it seems almost impossible to unsubscribe. I'm telling my bank to stop payment on bearshare charges if they don't respond to my email by monday.

I would try using Limewire instead. its a for better prog.

Nothing is better than the original BearShare, especially when it comes
to cutting through the forests of fakes, spam and malware. LimeWire is comparatively
crippled in the level of detail available on each source, making it easy for hostile
people and software to fool users into downloading useless or harmful files.

It's performance is the highest level as well, far beyond the Java-based software.