We all knew it was going to happen sometime. Someday the big music giveaway was going to be over. Of course, it's not over yet, but a timetable for the end has been set. By mid-year, Napster will be a pay-to-play service. Questions linger and remain unanswered. The only statements made were that there would be a fee--no mention of how much or if there would be a free service along with the premium-based part of the whole file sharing phenomenon.

I've downloaded over a thousand songs in the last six months or so. I think about 75% of the songs are different from my home CD collection (all of my Napsterizing comes at work because we have the big DSL pipes, as opposed to 56K at home). I throw them all into my mp3 player and put it on random. It's like having my own radio station, programmed by me, running off my computer. The day goes by a little better this way. I look at it as a quality of work life issue. And, for the most part, my employers don't care as long as I get my work done.

Napster is really a promotional tool, a way of making music available to check out (much like radio) and maybe get into. I know that most people probably don't run out and buy CDs of bands they download. It's much easier to burn a mix CD from the mp3s (there are conversion programs, such as MusicMatch, that convert from mp3 to CD sound files so regular CD players can read the music) than to shell out $15 for a new CD. So for established artists, the promotion argument is mute. They don't care about promotion. They care about getting paid.

It doesn't make me any more sympathetic to their cause, though. Any money they make off Napster downloading (when the fee becomes a reality) will probably disappear into the music company's Byzantine system for paying out royalties: the artists won't see much if anything. But I guess they'll feel better about it because SOMEONE is getting paid. All this talk about free music degrades the actual effort it takes to put music together, they say.

The promotion that has, for the most part, been absent from the Napster debate is about all of those unknown or little known bands. Local artists, independent labels, musicians who want their music to be heard but have no way of getting their wares out to the masses. This music is never played on the radio (I think there is an hour a week of local music played on the corporate radio stations in Albuquerque, if that) and the only way people can hear them play is if you go and see them at a club or coffee house somewhere.

Hopefully the people at Napster (who are not the easiest people to try and contact--try finding a "suggestions" e-mail address not concerning how to download the software on the Napster site) realize that keeping part of their file sharing service free would be a benefit to local artists. We keep saying that the Internet is a new, breakthrough, universal way of communicating with people all over the world. But if we don't keep avenues open for the common (and not making any money with his--or her--art) man, then it's just a way for the people already making money to make more. Which is not a particularly revolutionary thing.

Another avenue at the moment is the mp3.com site. You can, no matter who you are, upload your songs in mp3 format so that anyone--if they happen to find you through searches and queries--can get a hold of your music. For free. They also have a service where you can upload all the CDs in your collection to their servers and create your own streaming audio directly into your computer. But some record companies haven't given permission for this (it cost mp3.com a ton of money to settle with a few record companies last year) because this streaming is considered a "broadcast" of the music, and thus royalties are owed. Even though you have already paid for the CD. You paid for private use, but since it's going over phone lines or cable lines or whatever, it is a public broadcast (side note: we must kill all the lawyers).

This is the whole problem Napster is having. The difference between personal use and thievery. This is where laws stack up on top of each other and make it really hard to use this new technology to help the masses. The man wants his due and it don't matter who he steps on to get his cut. Even if it's his fans, the man doesn't care. Because this isn't all about the fans. This is about money and copyright issues and lawyers and media companies and contracts and the difference between public and private broadcast.

And while all of this goes on, we still have a free Napster for a few more months. So we'll keep swapping and downloading and "stealing" until we can't do it anymore. A year from now, what will Napster be? Will it just be another record promotion site or will it truly be a way to get all kinds of music out to all kinds of people? Will they use their powers for good or for evil? Will the last year just be a footnote in the history of music or will it be a turning point?

A year ago, different magazines said that a song or band will break huge because of the Internet. This hasn't happened as of yet. And if we keep cutting the avenues to new and underground music on the web, it won't ever happen. It would be totally cool to see a song break through the media clutter from nowhere and spread like a virus over the Internet. Change the world--if even for just a few minutes.

Matt Worley wonders if he's too old to join a punk band, turn on a million ears and rock them all.