"That would only encourage cheapskates to go and steal them."

You might be right, but what we're witnessing here is the inevitable consequence of an unregulated free market economy. People have always swapped music and always will. I agree there's a world of difference between making a copy of an album for a mate and posting it for the great unwashed to download but many people simply do not see music as commodity, and if there's one person whose posted on this thread who's never copied an album I'd be very surprised; those copies were still theft, regardless.

I had a look at SOP's links, and followed on to the Irish trad one which has a plethora of stuff I would dearly love to hear, but I personally don't download illegally any more (I did when Napster was about) and buy online or in record stores, although I suspect unless I win the pools or some other miracle occurs I'm resigned to the fact I'll get to hear the work of those musicians, most of whom are dead (and boy, I really would like to hear some of these recordings of the Clare musicians). I have good friends who are professional musicians and so always buy my music (direct from them if I can).

Thing is, we've lost so much choice. Go into HMV, look on iTunes and see if much of the rarer stuff can be found. HMV's folk section has become Flannagan and Allen and iTunes seems confused about what folk actually is (The Lightning Seeds?). No chance of picking up a Paddy Canny album there.

It's the system man, the system.