MP3 Music Blogs: For Your Listening Pleasure

Numer­ous MP3 blogs, oth­er­wise called “music blogs” or “audio blogs”, have sprout­ed up since 2003, offer­ing lis­ten­ers the chance to get exposed not only to for­got­ten music and out-of-print albums, but also to new music being put out by new bands and indie labels. Below, we have col­lect­ed some of the more well-regard­ed MP3 blogs across dif­fer­ent musi­cal gen­res. As you will note, many sites will host an MP3 for only a lim­it­ed amount of time, mak­ing it so that you can sam­ple music for free but also giv­ing you an incen­tive to pur­chase music that you like and want to own. Have a look and feel free to let us know if we’re miss­ing some good ones. Mean­while, we’ll add to this list over time. Sub­scribe to Our Feed

• An Aquar­i­um Drunk­ard: Based in Los Ange­les, this eclec­tic audio blog “bridges the gap between con­tem­po­rary indie and vin­tage garage, psych-folk, coun­try, New Orleans funk, R&B, soul and every­thing that falls in between.”
• Brook­lyn Veg­an: Here you get a New York City-cen­tric, most­ly-music blog that focus­es on report­ing music news, live show reviews, tour dates, and, yes, MP3’s.
• Cacoph­o­nous: A clas­si­cal music MP3 blog.
• Chrome­waves: Along with the rumi­na­tions of a self-con­fessed indie rock geek, you get an “MP3 of the Week” that fea­tures a ran­dom or not-so-ran­dom cov­er song.
• Daytrot­ter: Gives you “exclu­sive, re-worked, alter­nate ver­sions of old songs and unre­leased tracks by some of your favorite bands and by a lot of your next favorite bands.”
• Des­ti­na­tion: Out: A jazz blog focus­ing on rare or out-of-print music. Typ­i­cal­ly pub­lish­es twice a week, and leaves songs avail­able for about two weeks.
• Dis­co­belle: A Swe­den-based music blog that posts sin­gle tracks and remix­es and occa­sion­al­ly exclu­sive mix­es from DJs all around the world.
• Done Wait­ing: Part film, part music with MP3s.
• Elbows: A meta col­lec­tion of great music blog posts, which col­lec­tive­ly pro­vides you a snap­shot of what’s going on in the new genre of audio/music blog­ging.
• Fluxblog: One of the old­est and most com­mon­ly cit­ed MP3 blogs, this site posts two MP3s every week­day along with more relat­ed infor­ma­tion.
• Goril­la vs. Bear: One of the big­gies worth check­ing out.
• I Guess I’m Float­ing: A good music blog with a good sprin­kling of MP3s.
• Idol­a­tor: Maybe this sum­ma­ry will help: “When the inter­net came, we over­threw the pasty white tastemak­ers, the duplic­i­tous music mar­keters and the man­u­fac­tured pop idols. And then they all came back. This is Idol­a­tor. We’re so dis­ap­point­ed.”
• La Blo­gotheque: A well-regard­ed French lan­guage MP3 blog.
• Large­heart­ed Boy: A “music blog fea­tur­ing dai­ly free and legal music down­loads as well as news from the worlds of music, lit­er­a­ture, and pop cul­ture.”
• Marathon Packs: Writes about and lets you lis­ten to inter­est­ing songs, to para­phrase the sites self-descrip­tion. Keeps audio files post­ed for two weeks.
• Moist­works: An audio blog start­ed in April 2004 (mean­ing it has a track record) that gets updat­ed Mon­day through Fri­day.
• Motel De Moka: A dai­ly blog post­ing eclec­tic playlists, includ­ing indie rock, acoustics and ambi­ent.
• My Old Ken­tucky Blog: What’s new and hot in indie rock, pop, folk and hip-hop.
• Noth­ing But Green Lights: An MP3 blog that keeps track of indie, elec­tro, folk & pop, all from the UK. The site only posts tracks that the inter­net is giv­ing away for free, or ones that have been grant­ed per­mis­sion.
• Prod­uct Shop NYC: Although not exclu­sive­ly an MP3 blog, you do get some MP3s worth your time here.
• Said the Gramo­phone: Launched in 2003, the site is among the first MP3 blogs and it offers a dai­ly sam­pler of “real­ly good songs,” although all songs are removed with­in a week or two of post­ing. The blog comes out of Cana­da.
• Six Eyes: An MP3 blog by Alan Williamson.
• Skat­ter Brain: A most­ly indiepop music blog.
• So Much Silence: MP3s a plen­ty.
• Soul Crates: Your home for soul MP3s.
• Stere­ogum: A pop­u­lar gos­sipy blog about the indie music scene. The site often posts MP3s of new music, plus offers record reviews, announces tour dates, and cov­ers music fes­ti­vals.
• The Hype Machine: The Hype Machine tracks and aggre­gates a vari­ety of MP3 blogs. Anoth­er meta approach.
• The Music Slut: A com­pre­hen­sive music blog with oodles of MP3s.
• Trrill: Anoth­er good clas­si­cal music audio blog.
• WFMU Beware of the Blog: An MP3 blog run by WFMU, an inde­pen­dent freeform radio sta­tion broad­cast­ing out of NYC.
• Who Needs Radio?: We believe in music, not mon­ey. We’re here to keep your ears alive.
• You Ain’t No Picas­so: A good music blog with a very nice blogroll and MP3s too.