i have been trying to download some songs i heard on the radio. i do a search to find them and then when it shows up on the screen the quality column says i already have it downloaded.
i have checked the folders where i have the songs located and yet the song is not there. if id try to find the song going by the artist, the same things happens. before it would simply give a list of songs by the artist, and then i could pick it out there.

what is going on?

If you are using LW 4 & see the green tick beside them, make sure they are not spam. See Virus thread: Typical virus spam file sizes - Make a note of them (click on blue link to see). There's a few spam file sizes which will show the green tick. It tricks LW. O.o

My advice is to search via artist or song title only. Do not use both else you invite much more spam.

i only use one or the other for the search, as for the file size, they read as mp3 type and the size is consistant with a normal song file

5,611 KB, 3,787 KB, 3,462 KB are all consistent with a normal mp3 size yet they are all reknown virus sizes spammed on the network. Yes they read as mp3 type but that's because they trick LW into thinking they are such. There's a couple other newer file sizes too.

Do they show bitrate? Do they show id3 tag with album title, year of release? Most spam has limited id3 tag information, if any.

Do a test ... do an audio search ... for artist ... type in random letters such as owyulcnolsy9iu7ie & see if you get similar search results. I'm sure some results will show you already have that file. lol

thanks i will ltry that