Popular MP3 Blog Gets a New Name, Redefines MP3 Blogging

The popular MP3 blog, "Free Music Downloads," gets a new name, and changes the way artists view MP3 filesharing.

(PRWEB) February 19, 2005 -- "Free Music Downloads" has changed its name to "Knobtweakers", a tongue in cheek reference to a common technique used in electronic music production. The popular blog was started by Dilvie, an electronic music producer from Salt Lake City. The blog hit the electronic music scene near the beginning of January, and quickly gained a strong following. Unlike many other MP3 blogs, which risk legal action from the RIAA and copyright holders, "Free Music Downloads" was designed from the start as a legal promotion tool for independent electronic music acts, most of whom have no label affiliations.

Because of the legal nature of the blog, the songs remain online indefinitely, as opposed to the two or three days typical of other MP3 blogs. A new user can browse the archives and find literally hundreds of quality tracks waiting to be heard by potential fans. Dilvie believes that his idea of the MP3 blog will catch on for other styles of music. "An MP3 blog like Knobtweakers is a great way to get your music out to the right people," he says. "The audience is full of subscribers that fall into an ideal target demographic. They're young, they have money, they love the music being featured."

MP3 blogs have another major advantage over radio and other methods of advertising: Built in syndication. Blogs use a technology, called XML, that makes the content easy to syndicate. Many MP3 blogs are syndicated by online MP3 blog aggregators -- websites that collect the published feeds from many MP3 blogs and present them on a popular hub site. What's more, many blog subscribers run blogs themselves, so the potential for word of mouth advertising is tremendous. In the same way that blogs broke hot stories during the 2004 elections, mp3 blogs are beginning to break musical acts.

According to Dilvie, Knobtweakers is designed to do just that. "Every month, I publish a pair of top ten lists. One highlights the all time top ten, and the other highlights the most recent popular posts. The idea is to provide continuing exposure and syndication opportunities for artists with the most popular appeal." The top ten lists are syndicated by a number of online and offline publications.

Knobtweakers: http://download-electronica.blogspot.com/
Wikipedia article on MP3 blogs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3_blog
12 Minute audio story about MP3 blogs: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/audio/mp3blog

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