And (excuse me for barging back in, but)

I cannot stress enough the MONEY issue. I'm on a very limited budget; aren't most of us? We cannot spring for endless CDs.

For example, I just bought the 5-CD box of Memphis Minnie...oboy, a rare treasure for a singer whose original records have been more than unusually hard even for collectors to find. It was budget priced at $28.99...but I doubt I'll be able to afford another CD for a month or two. Basic economics.

Money money money money money. All of us have to make cruel choices, especially when we love music of many kinds and don't just focus on a single tradition. I'm wacko about Appalachian banjo and fiddle and ballads... blues... authentic cowboy songs... the songs of the entire British Isles... Breton music, Greek rembetica, Zimbabwean guitar music, why go on. Obviously I can't buy CDs in all these areas. Few of us can.

So I guess I'm pleading, too, for the possibility that, while record companies continue to make their money and royalties continue to be paid performers, there be some sort of nonprofit sound archive as a resource to spread the basic information about how a song sounds, its melody as performed, etc.---
just as DT enables us not to have to buy every folksong collection in the world.

In a small way I suppose this echoes the Napster problem in the Big Commercial Music World. How to get the music out without ripping anybody off. Even to those of us strapped for cash.

Too utopian? I sure hope not.