Can Newspapers Save Local Music?

impaler writes: "Roblimo has posted a great piece over at NewsForge about how the Washington Post and other newspapers are hosting MP3 download sites for local musicians and how the sites are actually very popular. An interesting read." Just because the "music industry" works a certain way right now doesn't mean that all change is bad; Bruce Springsteen is apparently finding that he doesn't need much beyond a lock and key to keep the Internet hordes from passing around his albums before they're released, and the musicians on the Washington Post site seem to like being there.

Comments

Missing the Point

[1stflight]

You've clearly missed the point, all bands start out as local bands, only blind dumb luck gets them to stardom, ..that or they're created. Otherwise do you think Backstreet Boys, NKOTB or N'Sync would've ever seen the light of day? No. This gives musicians everywhere an avenue to be heard on the cheap, by everyone, what more publicity could one ask for? It's a great idea and I'm thrilled to see it in action.

Intelligent MP3 Sharing

[elbarsal]

Before we get into the whole morass of issues about file sharing and fair use, we have to consider this - newspapers promoting local artists with MP3 dowloads is absolutely brilliant.

Think about it - nearly every major market has at least one "free" newspaper, and most markets do have some smaller newspaper, not owned by conglomerates (like Canwest/Global here in Canada) that could put forth, gasp, an original viewpoint, a cutting edge playlist, and even just good recommendations for new music, unlike any radio station (college stations excepted) or any major venue.

Now, will we have to worry about ClearChannel buying up North American newspapers if this catches on?

ed

Re:You can make money?

[Erasmus Darwin]

"What's this? You can share your music AND make money. And I thought the RIAA was telling the truth."

Way to quote it out of context. The text you're quoting is with respect to sharing 3 songs on the Washington Post site. 3 songs that were chosen by the copyright holder (presumably the band, given that they're unsigned). Not their entire album. Not whatever 3 songs a random P2P user chooses.

Guess what? This is the exact same thing that RIAA acts do, too. Take, for example, Linkin Park. They're big right now, they're signed with Warner Bros. Records, they're on the radio a lot, they're showing up on MTV. You don't get much more RIAA than that.

Yet on mp3.com, they've got their own page with FOUR songs available for anyone to download. That's a whole song more than the band interviewed by Roblimo. But still, it comes back to the fact that it's 4 songs that the copyright holder chose to release. It's only the songs they pick, and it's certainly not the entire CD.

Arguing that giving away a few songs from a CD validates unrestricted P2P filesharing is like arguing that a free demo of the first few levels of a game validates piracy. It's up to the copyright holder to decide how much freebie/give-away advertising to use to promote the product before it starts to cut into sales.