CHRIS BESTWICK

Imagine that you're in a city and you're standing in a large public square. You remember that some years ago the square was surrounded by concert halls, some grand and ornate, some small and simple. Music was performed in the halls, and to hear the music you had to pay.

It was the dream of most musicians to be able to play in the halls. To be sure, some musicians were happy to busk in the public square. Some of them became very good at this, and made a decent living from it, but the vast majority of musicians spent their time trying to get the concert hall owners to hear their music, even though they knew that only a tiny number of them would be selected to play.

One day a clever boy named Joshua invented a trumpet. This trumpet was special; when he blew it the walls of the concert halls came tumbling down. Everyone in the public square could hear any kind of music they wanted from the concert halls, without having to pay to go in. The concert hall owners were incensed. To them it felt like a disaster."You've ruined our businesses!" they shouted at Joshua, and promptly had him arrested, because what he had done was illegal.

But Joshua's trumpet couldn't be un-invented, and as it was cheap to duplicate soon everybody had access to the new Joshua-Trumpet technology. As quickly as the concert hall owners rebuilt the walls, someone else would blow them down. (Their motives varied: some said that the concert hall owners had charged too much money, and what was happening to them now was payback; some said they weren't planning to come to the concerts anyway, so their hearing them for free wasn't really affecting the owners; others said that they wanted to hear the concerts and would pay afterwards if they liked them.)

There were some intelligent arguments about the morality of the JT users, with good points made by both sides. Whatever the moral rights and wrongs, the reality of the situation was that, although it remained illegal, enforcing the law against the JT technology simply became unworkable. In effect, there were no private concert spaces left; all music now happened in public.

The musicians who had performed in the concert halls now found themselves in the public square, where buskers' rules applied. No longer could they take their paying audiences for granted. They had to compete to attract and hold people's attention, and had to learn new ways of speaking to their audiences, potential and actual. Some of the former concert hall musicians were very good at this, and continued to attract large crowds. Others, once the sheen of having been a concert hall performer had rubbed off, found themselves largely deserted.

The vast majority of musicians who'd only ever aspired to be concert hall performers realised that they could now compete with the former big names in the public square. If they played good music, and could talk to people in interesting ways, then they could build their own audiences.

Some business-people and economists from other parts of the city said, "OK, this means that music is now free to everybody. No-one's asking them to play in the public square, and the supply of music is exceeding the demand for it, so to all extents and purposes it's now technically worthless."

"Hold on a minute", said the musicians. "We're not playing for free; we're busking. No-one's asking us to play, but everyone understands the conventions governing what we're doing. It's not illegal to stand and listen to us, but if you do that for a certain time, and you enjoy what we're doing, you're morally obliged to leave us a little something." Most people in the public square appreciated this argument; they knew how busking worked too, and thought it only fair that the musicians got paid if they were good and entertaining.

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Now your memories dissolve and you stand surveying the square. All around you is a multitude of musicians. There is music of all different styles, far more than was ever heard in the concert halls. Some musicians are surrounded by large crowds. Others have a few ardent followers. Some make money; others don't, but play anyway. Some of the old hardcore JT crew still roam the square trying to listen to as much music as possible without leaving any money, chased by some of the old concert hall owners who still can't accept that the world has moved on, but by and large everyone is much happier in the new space.

Sometimes you join the large crowds, to feel part of something larger than yourself; sometimes you seek out new sounds you've never heard before to get the thrill of discovery, but always you leave a little something for the people you like.

After all, it's only fair.

Chris