Last week an impressive new music downloading application hit the mainstream. Mulve became hugely popular and demand was so great that the site's servers couldn't handle the pressure and fell over. Today the site is down again, not through excessive demand, but thanks to the lawyers at the RIAA.

Last week we reported on a very impressive music downloading application. With a claimed database of 10,000,000 tracks, Mulve can give many torrent sites a good run for their money.

Choice aside, Mulve is particularly fast too. Searches yield results quickly and tracks download at excellent speeds, yet this software is not a traditional P2P app – in fact, there is no uploading required at all. Pulling its data off fast servers in Russia connected to the country’s biggest social networking site, downloading from Mulve is about as ‘safe’ as it gets.

Last week, after generating dozens of headlines and excitement around the Internet’s tech sites, Mulve’s homepage went offline, unable to cope with the demand.

TorrentFreak has learned that the site was getting more than 30,000 visitors a day and they were carrying out around 15000 searches every hour.

The site soon returned but those wanting to use the software today, however, will have problems. It is completely down, not due to excessive demand, but due to the lawyers at the RIAA.

“Just letting you know that Mulve has received a DMCA take down request from the RIAA, so it needed to be taken offline,” a Mulve spokesman told TorrentFreak.

While Mulve hosted no illegal files, it appears that the RIAA discovered that a small element of the site was hosted with US-based Hostgator. Once that element was taken down it was enough to effectively disable the site.

It is understood that Mulve has a new update in the pipeline which will improve the application, but there is currently no news on when the site and application will return. TorrentFreak is assured, however, the downtime is just temporary.

In the meantime, as we wait for news, we can ponder on the meaning behind the word ‘Mulve’.

“It is an abbreviation for Music Love,” the developers told us.

Update: The site’s back up (for now).