This rebuttal ironically comes from a music blogger, and complicates my claim that blogs are poised to supersede traditional labels.  Dave Allen of Pempelmoose, states that blogs will simply not be the new music labels.  He credits this thinking to the crisis-mode state that the entire music industry is in and their hastiness to "grasp at straws."  His counterpoints center on a blogs' need to remain independent and his idea that record labels will not discontinue their functions as A&R sources.  Allen rebuts by saying that a blog must remain pure.  Plainly said, if they are contaminated by the corporate steamroller, blogs will lose the credibility they have garnered throughout the years.  Also, if MP3 blogging becomes a careerist endeavor, blogs will be shackled by a conflict of interest (promoting their own bands), betraying the very nature on which MP3 Blogs were founded. Also in regards to A&R, Allen states that the ceiling is caving in on major, not indie labels, who he claims to be thriving and will continue to act as band developers.

Allen is correct that if MP3 blogging became about money and sales, a conflict of interest would ensue.  However, there would be other blogs around who would police these postulated 'label-blogs' and poseurs would be quickly flagged and discredited.  Allen's second point is also true--major labels are flailing.  However that is all the more reason why MP3 blogs could become the new labels.  Capitalizing on the lack of trust in major record labels, a new system could develop--a congregation of smaller blogs.   

Written by correspondent Siddhartha Mitter, this article defines what an audio blogger actually is.  Mitter makes a claim that these MP3 bloggers are tastemakers--influencing their audience about what is good and what is not.  An important point is that audio bloggers don't just post an MP3 file, they also provide commentary, "a whimsical capsule review, with sound attached," he calls it.  He defines audio bloggers as unpaid obsessive music geeks who have capitalized on this generation's "sense of immediacy" about everything culture related.  He  acknowledges that bloggers have become the tastemaking elite, able to take acts such as Diplo from "obscurity to sensation" because of the 'buzz' these bloggere build.  Also mentioned briefly is a vague allusion to an unwritten Bloggers' Code of Conduct', in reference to how long a song is allowed to remain an downloadable.

This article raises several different issues pertinent to my topic.  First, it underscores the importance of the 'non-commercial' status of blogs in regards to their legality.  Second, it reaffirms the ideas that bloggers are the dictators of what is deemed "cool" as opposed to the industry public relation firms, music magazines, MTV (old media).  Perhaps most importantly, it parallels the mp3 blog and the book review.  An MP3 blog is contingent upon the fact that along with the MP3 posted, there is some sort of commentary to go along with it.  To me, this raises the question of Fair Use.  Obviously, book reviews are allowed to print excerpts of the book in their critiques, and the courts have ruled this as a transformative version of the original work.  My insinuation, is that MP3 blogs could fall under the same statute.  Does the fact the song is being being critiqued force the MP3 blog under the Fair Use Defense by creating a transformative work?