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

Re:Local music

[eaeolian]

Unfortunately, local music is around the same quality as local news--slim to none.

I'd disagree with that. There's a lot of high-quality local music in many cities that I've played in. Yes, there's also a good deal of trendy, badly-produced, over image-engineered crap, but that's music in general, isn't it? You have to take the bad with the good. Of course, you also run into the fact that people are used to hearing albums with high-dollar production values, and just can't see through the mediocre production to good songs/music.

Sadly, as a musician local to the D.C., I have to say that I didn't even know this existed. I now have to hope that the Post's snotty attitude towards forms of music other than Folk and Alterna-Rock doesn't carry over to the page, as there are a lot of local musicians here doing things worth hearing that aren't working in those genres. (Although I admit the Post's music critics have been getting better in this regard lately.)

Mp3's work for indie bands

[snoozerdss]

Being in an indie band for the past 4 years (www.snoozerland.com) I can say that napster and other file sharing programs have helped our record sales alot. Not that we are selling millions of records but napster helped boost our sales outside Canada. (Actually untill napster we weren't selling any records outside Canada!). It also brings people into the clubs in the cities you've never been to before when you tour.
Thanks to file sharing we're hitting the states for the first time in September when our new cd is released and we also will have two songs on an upcomming movie sountrack.
What record companies have forgotten is that word of mouth is a very powerful thing