I find that for every track I get for free from an artist, I tend to want to reward the artist fairly. This weekend just gone, I came across the CASH music site, linked to from Kristin Hersh's blog (http://www.throwingmusic.com/blog). I downloaded both the tracks she'd put up there, though "Hey, this is pretty good..." and decided to do the 3 dollar one-off donation that they ask for but don't force from you. Then as the tracks grew on me I thought "I could do with more of this..." so I went & bought her latest album from iTunes. The point being that for a lot of people, file-sharing is merely like a form of advertising, a free sample or loss-leader that gets the customer into the metaphorical showroom so they can buy more. Kristin's doing a great thing by releasing her work under a Creative Commons attributable, changeable share-alike license - people are free to remix it, mash it up, change the lyrics, cover it, do derivative artwork, sculpture or whatever, as long as they link back to their work & publish it under the same license. Her wish is that we regain the sort of musical communities we had back in the heyday of folk & blues, where a song remains after the artist has travelled elsewhere, & it takes on a local aspect, different chords, lyrics etc.