Audioblogs fill void in MP3 world

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Web sites flout the law with free tunes, but some labels play along

By Chris Vognar

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

Oliver Wang sits at his computer and gets busy schooling Web surfers in the ways of funk, jazz, soul, hip-hop, and other smoking grooves he wants to share -- a little Eartha Kitt here, a bit of Biggie Smalls there. By day, he's a freelance music critic and ethnic-studies student who just finished his doctoral thesis at the University of California-Berkeley. But with a click of a mouse, he leaves the world of professors and editors behind and becomes O-Dub, keeper of the popular audioblog site Soul Sides.

Soul Sides is where O-Dub can express his thoughts on Memphis soul and Latin jazz, on Billy Butler's Twang Thang and Jack McDuff's Electric Surfboard. It's where you can read his astute criticism and download his favorite music. For free.

He knows he's breaking the law, to the tune of about 1,500 hits a day. And he has plenty of company in the booming audioblog world.

"Posting copyrighted material online for people to download without permission is not legal," says Wang, whose writing has appeared in music magazines including Vibe and XXL. "The question is whether or not the recording industry would want to apply their limited resources to enforcing the law with bloggers."

The audioblog has become a staple of the MP3 age, with new sites popping up every week to serve a wide variety of musical tastes. Unlike Napster, the original file-sharing service, which the recording industry successfully sued for copyright violation, audioblogs are part diary, part criticism and part jukebox. They're run by individual music aficionados eager to spread the word on music new and old. Most sites include MP3 files, for listening and downloading.

Audioblog postings are eclectic, a reflection of the a la carte culture that brought us pay per view and video on demand. Recently on Soul Sides, you could hear Bill Cosby's old band, Badfoot Brown and the Bunions, performing Martin's Funeral and The Mouth of Fish. Over at the Tofu Hut, the catch of the day was David Boyle's The Rapping of the Christ. And Locust St., as usual, kicked it old school with Gene Autry's Little Big Dry.

Not surprisingly, audioblogs are multiplying like rabbits at a time when iPods fly off the shelves. New sites appear every week, with no end in sight.

Most sites encourage visitors to buy the record if they like a song; many provide purchasing links. Audioblog keepers generally leave MP3s up for a short period of time, and the postings are often not CD-quality. Some sites even address the legal implications.

"If you are the copyright holder of a posted song and do not want the song posted, by all means contact me and I will remove the song," reads the disclaimer on Locust St., an audioblog devoted to older music, particularly jazz. "But think for a minute first, and consider whether there is any possible harm in giving 50+-year-old music exposure to a new audience."

"If anything, it's an advertisement to buy old records from the '40s and '50s," says Chris O'Leary, the Queens, N.Y., resident who runs Locust St. "Universal owns most of this stuff now. If they want to send me a cease and desist order, I would gladly comply. But I don't see too many ads for Woody Herman music these days."

The Recording Industry Association of America feels differently. "If the copyright owner and artist is making the choice to use this tool to distribute their music, we think that's a great thing," says RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy in an e-mailed statement. "What concerns us is when someone else has taken it upon themselves to make that choice, and distribute music they do not own, when the copyright owner has not given permission."

Sensing a sharp promotional tool, record labels big and small ask bloggers to post new music from their artists.

"I'm getting CDs every day in the mail from different labels saying 'Post all you want,'" says Mark Willet, a co-creator of the audioblog Music (For Robots). "They know that we use discretion, that we're not going to post a whole album, and they're not afraid that we're going to start leaking everything. It's a matter of understanding what it is that we do."

Willet lists Sub Pop, Vice, and SpinArt among the labels that regularly submit new music for posting on Music (For Robots).

Dean Hudson, director of new media for Sub Pop, said the label provides free MP3s for several audioblogs.

"Our perspective on digital posting has been that we're not going to be able to stop it, so we might as well keep our customers' good will, and hopefully they'll want to buy our stuff," Hudson said.

Hudson also said that a small label like Sub Pop, which isn't a member of the RIAA, will generally view such matters differently than industry giants.

Of course, there are dissenting opinions. Wang once posted a song by a relatively obscure saxophonist named John Klemmer. Klemmer's representatives sent Wang a cease-and-desist e-mail message, and Wang removed the Klemmer MP3 file -- making the saxophonist even more obscure.
10 great audioblogs

Cocaine Blunts & Hip-Hop Tapes: Hip-hop rarities with some serious 12-inch action. (www.cocaineblunts.com/indexb.html.)

Copy, Right?: All covers, all the time. (www.copycommaright.blogspot.com.)

Fluxblog: Tres eclectic. (www.fluxblog.org.)

Locust St.: A discriminating site for old music (particularly jazz), currently taking a tour through the music of 1948.-(inkhornterm.blogspot.com.)

Moistworks: Your place for Milla Jovovich cuts and other cool things. (www.moistworks.com.)

Music (For Robots): A tag-team operation with specialists in most pop disciplines. (www.music.for-robots.com.)

Said the Gramophone: Highly literary pop analysis. (www.tangmonkey.com/ blogs/music.)

Soul Sides: Lots of '60s-'70s jazz and soul vinyl, with the occasional dab of vintage hip-hop. (www.o-dub.com/soulsides.)

Stereogum: Kitschy pop sensibility, great taste. (www.stereogum.com.)

The Tofu Hut: A little bit of everything, from B.B. King's Sweet Sixteen to David Boyle's The Rapping of the Christ. (www.tofuhut.blogspot.com.)