MANCHESTER, TN Gateway, a sponsor of Bonnaroo, will be offering free downloads of portions of the Bonnaroo Music Festival next week. Beginning Wednesday, MP3 files of live music from the weekend will be available at www.gateway.com. The tracks will be approved by the individual bands.

On the festival site, Gateway has set up a cyber cafcomplete with high-speed Internet and air conditioning. There is also a free digital music trading village where fans can burn discs of the artists performing at the festival.
You hear a lot about file sharing that takes money out of the artists hands, which isnt right, says Brad Williams, Director of Corporate Communications for Gateway. Weve always said that if you like a band, stealing from them is a funny way to show it. On the other hand, the bands here at Bonnaroo encourage the sharing of live performances. Thats why were here with the music-sharing village because its a great opportunity for people to come check out some of the live material that were presenting in partnership with the bands and their management and their labels. Theyve selected some live tracks of past performances for people to burn their own, personalized CDs in the music-sharing village.