I steal music on the Internet. Chances are, you do, too. It’s 2008, and every music fan under the age of 30 knows how to download the latest MGMT album in under 30 minutes. Whether you access them or not, the songs are out there in little bits and pieces, waiting while you eat, sleep, read, and do whatever else you do while not stealing music on the Internet. For a financially challenged youth whose goal is to learn everything she can about each noise that’s been made by humans since long before she was born, someone seeking an antidote to the demographically-calibrated sludge blaring from commercial radio and TV, someone searching for that needle in a haystack that is that one, perfect album she’ll play on repeat while she eats, sleeps, and reads, the temptation is too great to resist. Is it wrong? Technically, yes. Perhaps she even feels a little guilty. But the benefits outweigh the possible costs so heavily that she hardly thinks of them. It’s a clichéd truism that music feeds the soul; without it, one goes mad in subtle ways.

What, then, is to be done about naughty folks like you and me? The ever clearheaded Recording Industry Association of America has decided to sue people. Now, normally, this would be a good idea for them. Lawsuits usually work wonders when a powerful corporation wants to get people to stop doing things that piss it off, especially when the law is on its side. Unfortunately, you can only sue so many people at once, and in order to eradicate file-sharing, you’d have to sue every single person who uses bit torrents, FTP clients, and other illegal means of downloading; as of 2003, an estimated 60 million Americans used file sharing programs, which means the current number is probably much higher. And that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the vast networks of piracy in places like China, where attitudes towards the ethics of “sharing” are decidedly nonchalant. In Communist China, files share you!

Ethical or not, file sharing is an inexorable force. While the RIAA continues its futile attempts to halt it, music purveyors of all stripes have come up with creative ways to make the public’s hunger for free music work for, not against them.

First, we have the rock stars who have already made more money than they could ever possibly spend on hookers, blow, designer coffins, monkey skeletons, and, in Thom Yorke’s case, plates of baked beans on toast. Radiohead made a groundbreaking move in 2007 when they announced they would release In Rainbows electronically on a pay-what-you-wish model, with an option to order an expensive physical version containing two CDs, two vinyl LPs, a hardcover book, photos, and other goodies. As they did not have the backing of major label money, all of the physical copies were paid for in advance by fans, then made to order and shipped to them. Other artists had been giving away songs for years, but as one of the biggest bands in the world, Radiohead was in a unique position to draw attention to the practice. Yorke foreshadowed the choice in a 2003 interview with Time:

Shortly thereafter, Trent Reznor followed suit and released Ghosts I-IV on a similar model to Radiohead's: free electronic downloads, accompanied by physical versions of increasing levels of deluxe-ness, depending how much NIN fans were willing to pay. Ghosts I-IV pulled in $1.6 million in its first week, not bad for a “free” album (especially considering Reznor didn't have to share the fruits of his labor with a record label). By cutting out the middle man, NIN, Radiohead, and others are declining to give a large chunk of their profits to labels in exchange for performing services they could better provide for themselves: marketing, radio play, etc. They also show a genuine concern for their fans, i.e. the people who made them stars to begin with, by responding to their downloading habits with an improved product they'll want to buy, rather than with lawsuits.

To be fair, NIN and Radiohead didn't take over the world on their own. In the absence of other options, they relied heavily on the traditional system to get where they are today. However, many independent bands and labels are using free albums to build careers from scratch. Little-known bands have always given out free CDs and tapes in the hopes of winning over new fans, and it would be remiss not to mention that hip hop has long been ahead of the curve in this area. The hip hop mixtape, pioneered by artists like Grandmaster Flash, was essential to the birth of the genre, and has often been used by artists and labels as a promotional tool as well as a way to release new songs rapidly and informally. (Despite major labels' prevalent use of them, the RIAA still views mixtapes as illegally pirated records.) Now, other types of labels are employing their own version of this practice in the hopes of drawing enough funds to support themselves. Indie rock boy-wonder-turned-thoughtful-scene-custodian Conor Oberst is testing the waters with his Team Love label, which he founded in 2003, by offering all of its albums for free in mp3 form. Oberst elaborated on his theory in an interview with BusinessWeek:

Judging from the success of Team Love bands such as Tilly and the Wall, Jenny Lewis, and Willy Mason, Oberst’s hippie-dippie “social contract” model seems to be working. Another factor to consider is that true music fans, the ones who spend all day hunting down obscure mp3s of bands they read about in obscure blogs, do more than download albums. They attend shows, buy t-shirts, purchase their favorite records on vinyl, turn their friends onto what they like, get in flamewars about bands on messageboards, and yes, often blog about them. CD sales are only part of the big picture.

Does that sound too grass-roots to you? Are you wary of music without major corporate backing? Then check out Rcrdlbl, which has harnessed the power of corporate youth-lust for the noblest of purposes. Part label, part mp3 blog, this site offers free, well-curated mp3s of both in-house bands and artists from other labels. Rcrdlbl relies on the appeal of its product to attract (young, hip) traffic, which in turn attracts advertisers eager to place their name next to something cool in the hopes that people gleeful over the free album they’re downloading will form some sort of positive association in their heads, heretofore looking upon their brand favorably. It seems to be working on my own porous brain… after several hours of pillaging Rcrdlbl, the Cold War Kids’ "Hang Me Up to Dry" now awakens in me the sudden, violent urge to own a Lexus. (Sponsors be wary, though: whenever I hear any band that played McCarren Pool last summer, I have the sudden, violent urge to vomit Dewars and Redbull all over my shoes.)

These are only a few of the 80 dillion ways artists and labels both large and small have been using the internet to suit their individual needs and those of their fans. More free downloads can be found on mp3 blogs like Gorilla vs. Bear, Stereogum, and appropriately-named mp3 blog-aggregator The Hype Machine. With the plethora of new platforms in existence, soon greedy, artist-gouging majors will be a thing of the past, and former executives will be reduced to busking in the streets for change. A girl can dream, anyway.