Steve Jobs caused a stir two weeks ago with his "I know Europe's ticked that we won't license FairPlay, but we'd ditch DRM tomorrow if those darn record companies would let us" manifesto. And now you're saying, "Susie, late to the party much? This has been discussed to death!" And I agree with you. But you know who else is late to the party? Anyone who thinks that music on the Internet A) must cost money to be legal and not pirated, B) comes with all kinds of copy restrictions, and/or C) is encoded in such a lossy, low-quality format that you may as well buy it on CD and rip it yourself.

As mentioned in our "The Best Things in Life Are...Free!" cover story in the January 2007 issue of MacAddict (p21), you can get music for free on the Internet, whether you're streaming tunes from Pandora or CNET, searching GoingWare or FreeMacMusic, or even just grabbing an MP3 or three from your favorite band's MySpace page. Again, you probably knew that. What you might not know is just how much unreleased, unrestricted live music can be downloaded from the Live Music Archive, or grabbed via BitTorrent from etree.

Live music...you mean bootlegs? BitTorrent...isn't that for pirates? No, no, no. See, since the heyday of the Grateful Dead, a huge number of bands have allowed their fans to record and trade copies of their live shows. Free! No strings, except that they can't be bought or sold. And as much as I love albums (they're kind of taking over my house, actually), live shows are where it's at. You get covers, different versions of the same old songs, the energy of the crowd, longer playing time...and seriously, any band that can't turn it out at a live show just isn't as impressive to me anyway. And it's not just hippie bands that populate the Archive and etree. Yes, you have your jamband staples like the Dead, Umphrey's McGee, String Cheese Incident, and so on, but you'll also find 311, Death Cab for Cutie, Jack Johnson, Matisyahu, The Decemberists, Ryan Adams, Elliott Smith, The Walkmen, Ween (with shows dating back to 1989!), and much, much more. In fact, printing out the Archive's current list of bands took 14 pages. Yes.

Better yet, most of the live shows on offer aren't in MP3 format. Instead they're compressed as SHN (or "shorten") or FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Compression) files. Yes, that means that iTunes won't play them until you convert them to WAV or another supported format, so it's a little more work for you. But the advantage is that no data is lost in the compression, so you don't get any degradation in sound quality. And since the wonderfully geeky types who actually tape these shows spend a lot of time, effort, and money getting their "rigs" together to make these recordings (check out the source info on any show; it often breaks down to the tiniest detail: what brand of mics were used, how tall the mic stand was, where it was placed, what cables were used, the bit rate, the software used in the conversion, even the name and email of the taper in many cases), it'd be a shame to compress the tracks to MP3 with its tinny cymbals and muddy low end. Plus, once an MP3 is uncompressed, when it's burned to an audio CD for example, and then recompressed back to MP3, the quality degrades even further.

So if the shows you have your eye on are in SHN format, you need to get Shorten for Macintosh or xACT (which I use) and use them to convert the files to WAV. If you downloaded a show in FLAC format, you'll need xACT again (see why I like it?) or pretty much any app from this page to convert the FLAC files to WAV. From there, you can burn the WAV files onto audio CDs with your burning app of choice, and/or add them to iTunes, from where you can further convert them to Apple Lossless, AAC, or whatever format you prefer for listening through iTunes or adding to your iPod.

Anyway, if what I've said here doesn't make sense, and you get stuck with files that you're having trouble playing, post a comment and I can help you out in a future blog post. Otherwise, to get you started, here are the last 10 shows I've downloaded from the Live Archive.

1. Keller Williams 1999-04-03 SBD (soundboard) in FLAC. Keller plays acoustic guitar, looping over on himself with a JamMan, at this private party in the Oakland hills. Chill and sublime. Deadheads will love the gorgeous cover of "Eyes of the World."

2. Del McCoury Band 2005-10-1 in FLAC. Del McCoury was one of Bill Monroe's famous Bluegrass Boys, and his band, featuring his sons Ronnie and Robbie on mandolin and banjo, respectively, is THE best traditional bluegrass outfit playing today. (The Archive has Del recordings as far back as 1969! Flashback!) I saw this free show at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival held each October in Golden Gate Park. Free show, free download...what a country.

3. My Morning Jacket 2006-07-01 in FLAC. This was the Saturday-night headlining set at last summer's High Sierra Music Festival, a tradition for me. I watched it with my buddies in Future Rock (see #4) and we were all pretty blown away. There's a ton of MMJ on the Archive, so enjoy.

4. Future Rock 2006-08-25 SBD in FLAC. Future Rock are my pals from college, and they turn out the rock of the future: bass, synth, and the sickest drummer I've seen in a long time. This set, from this year's Camp Bisco festival, is seriously hot.

5. Phil Lesh and Friends 2004-12-17 SBD in FLAC. Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh puts together bands of "friends" for a tour, a three-night run, or even just a show, so audiences never know what to expect. I saw this monster show at the Warfield here in San Francisco, and the band featured Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes, Jimmy Herring, members of Railroad Earth, and more. Get it for the soulful "Althea" and the hands-down best version of "Sugaree" I've ever heard. (Sorry, Jerry.)

6. Meltone 2004-03-06. Another band I saw at High Sierra, Meltone is a wacky Japanese outfit that blends rock, funk, silliness, and the occasional keytar. Dig on the Michael Jackson and "2001" covers. Bonus: You can get it in MP3, Ogg Vorbis, or SHN.

7. Tea Leaf Green 2006-09-30 in FLAC. I saw this at San Francisco's Fillmore with a couple awesome friends, and it's the best Tea Leaf Green show I've ever seen. And since they're my favorite band, that's quite the thing for me to say. It rips, all the way through.

8. Yonder Mountain String Band 2002-03-16 in FLAC. Colorado-based YMSB doesn't just play bluegrass. They play the HECK out of some bluegrass, and they mix it up with rock covers, long jams, and the occasional onstage shot of Jagermeister. I caught this show in Madison WI and it's still my favorite for the lonely gem "Mother's Only Son," the beatiful take on the Rolling Stones' "No Expectations," and fiddle wizard Darol Anger's blazing runs on the Misfits' "20 Eyes." Yes, the Misfits.

9. Blue Turtle Seduction 2006-06-29 in FLAC. Tahoe-area favorites Blue Turtle Seduction stole the show at High Sierra last year. This set will do much to explain why.

10. Bonnaroo Superjam. Tennessee's annual Bonnaroo festival brings the biggest names in music together for a weekend of nonstop fun, culminating in the annual Superjam. The Archive has three of 'em, all different, each spectacular in its own way. Give it a spin -- after all, the jam is the essence of live music.

Enjoy!