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Independent musicians are looking to blogs as a powerful avenue for music promotion, top-40charts.com reports.

Many musicians are releasing free MP3s as promotional tools, and a new kind of blog is emerging to spread the word.

From Top-40-Charts.com:

MP3 blogs make music files available for free download. Typical MP3 blogs post music that is hard to find or out of print, and often do so without the permission of artists and labels, but some offer promotional MP3's with the full knowledge and cooperation of the artists. Several bloggers are overwhelmed with music that is sent to them for review.

The climate is producing a new kind of grassroots marketing for independent acts. While major labels fight music downloads or sell songs with DRM (designed to make it difficult to copy), independent acts go out of their way to spread their music as far and wide as possible.

Forget American Idol. Simon, Paula and Randy here's where to find your next stars.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.