In the past few years, there's been major controversy concerning the downloading of music from the Internet and its connection to the failing recording industry. Those against downloading and file sharing see it as a simple case of copyright violation: both legally wrong and morally objectionable. However, supporters insist that the illegality of downloading is possibly questionable and usually acceptable in a moral sense.

But both sides will agree on one aspect: for people who don't wish to pay for music, it can be pretty much absolutely free. And there's an image for you to think about - the virtual gatecrashers of the 'net as hippie chill'en of the real life gatecrashers at Woodstock or the Isle of Wight.

But I've found a way around the whole mess that keeps everybody happy - just find some musicians that are willing to allow you access to their copryrighted material to listen to or download for free. And as it turns out, there are plenty of Internet posting sites where people will upload their own music for the general public to hear or download with minimum payment or none whatsoever.

The catch is that most of these musicians are virtually unknown to the world at large - and frankly, for at least some of them, that's deservedly so. I'm all for attempts at covering songs as a sort of complicated karaoke, or writiing generic run of the mill, pretty darn mediocre material - after all, you gotta start somewhere. But if you, as a listener, can wade through some of that, you'll find that pretty much every music posting site has a number of hot artists playing original material of every genre that you'd probably actually purchase with your hard earned cashola if your local indie CD and used vinyl store had it in stock. And why don't these great unknowns have a recording contract? Who knows - for whatever reason, they're toiling away in obscurity, still looking for the perfect chord as it were.

But, as I mentioned, the crucial difference between these unpublished postings and commercially available music is the cost. If the 75 cents is too much for your budget, look some more and you'll find something similar for no cash at all. And it's not my intent to shill for myself or my friends and acquaintances, or the posting sites we frequent, but some of the places I've found of some interest would be: SoundClick, iMusicScene, and SongPlanet, all of which might be places that you yourself could start looking into if you're interested.

Anyway, this ripple in the recording industry ocean may one day become a curl so big you could surf on it on a board made up of old vinyl copies of your Aerosmith albums (long since replaced on CD, of course). It kind of reminds me of when multitrack digital home recordiing studios first became popular - no one knew that only a few years down the road, bands would be recording their albums in their basement or rehearsal spaces, putting many professional recording studios out of business. Perhaps these tracks, mostly made for the love of music (since there's no point making them for the love of money) will never amount to anything in the big picture - or maybe they will: in the great sea of possibility (thanks, Patti!) that is rock and roll, anything can happen.