Music Marketing

Are MP3 Blogs Under Attack?

Emails from mp3 bloggers received in recent days as well as posts on mp3 blogs point towards renewed attacks from the RIAA and its UK equivalent the IFPI. MP3 blogs operate in a legal gray area, but have become a major source of exposure particularly for indie music. Most mp3 bloggers take down any track on request, but recently rights holders are going straight to ISPs or service providers demanding action. Last week the Berkeley Place blog wrote:

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"I’ve been a non-RIAA reviewer for over a year now…That used to be a safe approach…A few weeks ago, I posted a collection of covers of songs from the 1980s. To my knowledge, only one of the artists featured in that post had a connection to the RIAA. That was Chris Cornell. But the song that I posted was a live recording, not commercially released. Nevertheless, the post mysteriously disappeared from my site. Over the next few weeks, this happened twice more. Blogger, my host, has been utterly silent on the issue. I am not alone in this – it’s happened to some of the best bloggers out there, like Ryan’s Smashing Life, and So Much Silence.

Then, an 11-month-old post from my WordPress site got dinged…(They) told me who the DCMA notice was from. It was from the IFPI…The post was on a band that was independent when I wrote about them, Wild Sweet Orange, and contained only one mp3, which was hosted by RED…In other words, it was a legal mp3."

If trade organizations handcuff mp3 bloggers, they run the risk of destroying one of their most effective viral promotion outlets.

  • I’d love to hear more from effected bloggers, labels and fans.
  • What do Hypebot readers think?

Bruce Houghton on 11/03/2008 in Music Marketing | Permalink | Comments (11)
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11 Comments

  2. It is about time musicians and labels cough up a method for bloggers and reviewers to offer up decent free previews. Perhaps a good widget system? I love the Amazon widget, except it just does 30 second previews, which is worthless for the types of music I listen to (classical, electronic and ambient). I run a very small time MP3 blog and would gladly switch to some legal alternative, but there simply isn’t anything out there. As such, I agree with you, the music industry is shooting themselves in the foot with this approach by punishing their fans and cutting off a free vehicle for exposure.

  4. why does hypebot support the lawbreakers ? there ARE legal alternatives, like imeem, last.fm etc…..

  6. Thanks for your support, Bruce.
    I’ve had two recent instances of posts disappearing from blogger’s servers due to copyright issues. Upwards of 90% of the mp3s on my blog are either provided by publicists/labels/bands/management or are already available through band/label websites. Still, these two posts of record reviews featuring the following bands: Dr Dog, Okkervil River, Boston Spaceships, Brightblack Morning Light, Gentleman Jesse, Blitzen Trapper, F*cked Up, Oneida, Sic Alps, and Oxford Collapse, were removed without a notice of infringement. Granted, two of the 13 mp3s were unapproved (and that’s a little higher than my 90% goal), but those were from the bands on the smallest labels, Siltbreeze and Douchemaster. I have a hard time believing either of those groups were responsible for the takedowns.
    I wholly believe this recent wave of activity is a result of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Publicists feed us records and approved mp3s, while the legal departments appear to taking blanket action, demanding the removal of posts regardless whether the audio in question has permission to be used for promotion or not.
    It’s a frustrating time to be a music blogger.

  7. I am a recording artist and I have offered free music to fans and podcasters through the podsafe music network. I believe that offering free mp3s is an essential part of modern marketing strategy and a great way to market your music. However, I have been disheartened to find several bloggers giving away my entire album on several occasions.
    I will give my album to anyone who has a blog or who wants to review it for any sort of publication. It’s part of the process of getting exposure. But why do the readers of the blog need to get the entire album for free? I just don’t get that. I wouldn’t mind if they even offered one or two tracks which might lead some readers to seek out more of my music. But the whole album?
    I also write a blog (http://desmondwilliams.wordpress.com) and I allow my readers to listen to my music through embedded players and I also point them to places like iLike.com where I have free downloads that actually aid in the process of spreading my music. Why can’t more bloggers take this type of approach?
    I’m relatively new to online distribution so I’d really appreciate it if anyone could enlighten me on these points.
    thanks,
    desmond williams

  8. Thank you for this insightful yet open-ended post about the RIAA’s impact on mp3 blogging. As a student blogger new to the blogosphere, but well versed on the importance of blogs to online music marketing strategies, I am just becoming familiar with the process of releasing material to blogs for promotional means. There is no denying that a traditional mp3 blog post is a great way for band’s to gain exposure on the web. However, I believe that the way in which material is presented to blogs should be honed by the artists and labels that control the content so that artists who release their material in the hopes of getting publicity know what content is being released and how those releases are being presented. If artist’s and record labels were specific about the way they want their songs presented on blogs, defining which songs off their album, or how many they want included in the post, there would be far less confusion in terms of what ends up in an mp3 post and whether or not a post is valid by the RIAA’s standards. Ideally, the integration of widgets or other applications in blog press releases, developed and preset by artist’s and labels, would both ensure that bloggers have the artist’s permission to make a post and release a few songs. Widgets would allow the parameters of the release, like how many songs are released for free download, to be controlled by the artist and would also limit the amount of content released in an mp3 post. Then the mp3 blog post would be of maximum benefit to both the artist and blogger, keeping the phenomenon of free album release against the artist’s will to a minimum. If there was a simple and attractive almost cut and paste application that artist’s and labels could drop a few mp3’s into and include with their press releases, it would even make the job easier on bloggers. Thinking ahead to what a widget like this could potentially do, if a digital download feature or link was included with a stream, mp3 blogs could become the music stores of the future. While I have been thinking about this idea for quite sometime, a post was recently made on distorted-loop.com about such a widget.

  9. I had my first “DMCA takedown” last week come via Blogger in regards to a 2 year old post of a tribute post to the late Lee Hazlewood. Ironically, I was headed out to a Lee Hazlewood tribute show at the time and when I looked at the post, realized that all the tracks listed were ones I found via search engines on other servers. None of the tracks I apparently was singled out for were hosted by me, or Blogger, so the only thing removed was my writing about Mr Hazlewood…Now all the files are still up and accessible via the same search engines I discovered them on, but my writing endorsing the albums, and link to buy the self published book by Hazlewood is gone. Like other sites I am going to switch out my Blogger hosting I suppose. I’ve considered re-uploading the piece since I don’t feel like I am violating the law by linking to content that others posted.

  10. It is a frustrating time to be a music blogger. I started my blog a month ago and am always questioning how to go about things when it comes to discussing an artist and their music. I look to other blogs like this one to give me the information I need to know as far as what I may or may be doing wrong. I hope that things will get better. Bloggers are a great way for these artists to get noticed.
    —cris

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