" 'Can newspapers help make record companies obsolete?. - By Robin 'Roblimo' Miller - I just downloaded Internet Porn from The Washington Post's Web site. It's one of the quirkier songs available from MP3.washingtonpost.com, a section of the Post's site that allows local musicians to self-publish their work online for free. MP3 download sections are not yet common in daily newspapers, but if enough of them pick up on the idea, newspapers could become as strong a promotional force in the music ...' [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

'Wow. Way to completely sidestep the major labels for getting the word out. Since it's local news, the papers have an interest in promoting the bands, and the bands then have an in with a major media outlet in their area. Fantastic.' " [Ryan Greene's Radio Weblog]

There's something incredibly cool about being able to say you downloaded "internet porn" from The Washington Post! This is a really interesting direction for such a major newspaper to take, and I'm glad to see it's working out for both the paper and the artists:

"Cliff Mays' band, Heydevils, is promoted almost entirely on the Internet and by word of mouth. They currently have three songs available for download through the Post's site, and, Cliff says, 'The Post has helped a lot with exposure. People go from the Post's site to our heydevils.com site, where there are more MP3s to download, and they can

Read the article and try to tell me Maria shouldn't be blogging!! Hey Andy R. - the software's open source, buddy!

Here's a question for the collective memory: did the Washington Post ever offer a service (around the hey day of MP3.com's My MP3 time) that let you bank your own music on their site? I could swear they were doing this, but I can't find a reference to this now so I'm wondering if I just confused it with the local music implementation. Anybody?