Wonderful World of MP3

It came to my attention the other day that not everyone knows about MP3 blogs. Unsurprising - they are shy, retiring creatures. But they have been around since at least 2003, and they are a wonderful resource for a music fan.

An MP3 Blog is a blog which offers access to digitized music that isn't available anywhere else. There is usually a short post, which explains the significance and impact of the track or album, there's a picture of the cover and then there's a link to Rapidshare or other download site.

MP3 Blogs pride themselves on offering rare, unavailable music. If you need the latest Miley Cyrus offering, you would want to look elsewhere. But yesterday I downloaded a Peter Wyngarde album from 1970. I found The Groupies on MP3. I'm currently listening to Graham Bond's Holy Magick. If you're seeking something you've heard about but can't find in the usual outlets, search the blogs.

I usually search using Addictomatic http://addictomatic.com/ . Google's pretty useless for this type of search. Type in your keywords as usual and Addictomatic will separate the results into types - including blogs ("bloglines"). Look through the results for an MP3 download. Then download it from the offered site. (These are not P2P, or peer-to-peer downloads that require a seeder. The files are already there in cyberspace and you're downloading it to your hard drive without other computers sharing the task.) Usually the files are zipped - they end in .rar. Save the files in a folder and use Winrar to unpack them. If there is a part 2, download it into the same folder before unpacking. Winrar will sew all the files together automatically. You can play these files with Windows Media Player, or put them on an MP3 player.

Some people won't use MP3 blogs because, well, because they're MP3s, which is a low-end, lossy way to encode music. Fine- if you can find a torrent or other source of FLAC or WMA files, take those. For most of this type of track, the only way you're going to hear them is on MP3 - so you might as well go for it.

One plea though - if you like an MP3 and you find the music is available somewhere on CD, please go ahead and buy it. Artists have to eat too. In fact, if it wasn't creeping me out so much, I'd buy the Graham Bond album on import even though Bond no longer needs to eat.

Search Engines:

Addictomatic http://addictomatic.com/

The Hype Machine http://hypem.com/

A Few Individual Blogs:
Anomalous Mind
TWILIGHTZONE!
Floodlit Footprint
Lost-In-Tyme