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By Adam Pasick, Reuters

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LONDON ? A new genre of Web sites that offer an eclectic mix of free music downloads may not be strictly legit, but the sites’ creators say they’re doing the beleaguered record industry a favor.

Named for the MP3 music format and the popular self-published Web sites known as blogs, they are part online mixtape, part diary, and part music magazine.

The tunes are drawn from remixes, forgotten genres and out-of-print albums, usually accompanied by detailed descriptions and reviews.

“Most of the artists that I cover are pretty obscure, and I like to help them get a bit of publicity and grassroots support,” said Matthew Perpetua, a DJ, freelance writer and creator of Fluxblog, one of the oldest MP3 blogs.

“The blog also serves as a musical diary for my own purposes,” Perpetua said. “It’s interesting to go back through it and see what I was interested in, and how my tastes ebb and flow.”

Current offerings at Fluxblog include an obscure funk duet by Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby and an unreleased single by songstress Fiona Apple.

Once listeners find an MP3 blogger with a simpatico musical taste, they can check back daily for new tunes. MP3 blogs are intricately cross-referenced via long lists of links, and hopping from site to site can easily consume several hours.

Well-known blogs include Soul Sides, which has underground hip-hop and forgotten R&B; The Tofu Hut, whose offerings range from gospel artists Blind Mamie and A.C. Forehand to rockabilly performer Carl Perkins to soul god Donnie Hathaway; and Said the Gramophone, which has indie rock, folk music and hip-hop.

It’s a point of pride among MP3 bloggers to unearth a forgotten musical gem.

“It really is looking for niches,” said Soul Sides creator Oliver Wang, a music journalist and radio DJ who digs into his dusty crates of LPs to find forgotten tracks to post online. “The whole point is to show off, to let me introduce you to something you haven’t heard about before.”

No crackdown — yet

Even the most popular MP3 blogs have no more than a few thousand visitors per day. Perhaps because of their size, or because they don’t tend to offer mainstream pop, they have mostly escaped the Recording Industry Association of America’s crackdown on illicit downloading.

The lobbying group for the world’s largest record labels, seeking to stop illicit file trading that it says has decimated the music industry, has filed thousands of lawsuits against people who use file-trading networks like Kazaa, but MP3 bloggers haven’t been targeted — at least so far.

“I highly doubt that everything that I am doing is legal, but I haven’t heard from the RIAA or any of the artists or their record labels yet,” said Michael Ryan, who runs two MP3 blogs, Royal Magazine and Royal Music.

“If someone contacts me and wants their material removed,” he added, “then I will remove it.”

The RIAA was not available for comment.

In an attempt to dodge lawsuits, most MP3 blogs have disclaimers that their music is for “sampling purposes only,” and they urge people to buy the artists’ music. Some have direct links to Amazon.com and other retailers.

“It’s not like I’m posting MP3s of the latest Britney Spears or Usher songs,” Ryan said. “The artists whose songs I post generally are not selling that many albums. I post their songs hoping that their music will affect some of my readers the same way that it has affected me and, like me, they will go out and purchase the artist’s album.”

Marketing muscle

MP3 blogs may help record labels market music that would otherwise never find an audience and provide an alternative to the zero-tolerance model that says any online songs that aren’t purchased are stolen goods.

“I get sent free records all of the time lately, which is a nice sign — there are a lot of labels out there who see the potential of the MP3 blog format as a venue for marketing records,” said Fluxblog’s Perpetua. “I think that only the most conservative labels will see MP3 blogs as a threat.”

For now at least, music fans on the Web have a cornucopia of new sounds to sample. As the MP3 blog Tofu Hut proclaimed: “The problem is no longer in finding new music; it’s how to balance the canoe in the sea of riches.”

Other music blogs of note include Music for Robots, a group blog with genres including electronica, hip-hop and punk; Largehearted Boy, which has prolific postings of live sets and B-sides; Ready Rock Moe Rex, on which recent postings include Afrobeat and R&B; The Number One Songs in Heaven, which has old-school funk and soul; and The Suburbs Are Killing Us, where recent postings include reggae and folk.