For music lovers, MP3 blogs are one of the great developments of recent years. Going to the blogs and downloading songs has been a great way to discover new music and for artists to start to make their names.

But what if you don’t want to go to these blogs everyday and download the files? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a program that just grabbed the MP3s, let you preview them, download the files if you want, and subscribe to get updates whenever you want?

There is. Meet Peel.

Peel is a cool MP3 blog browser that helps you subscribe to blogs for songs and lets you listen to and download them. It’s like an RSS reader just for MP3s.

It’s simple to use and it’s free (for now. When it comes out of beta, it will run you $14.95).

To try out Peel, start by doing downloading it (NOTE: Sorry PC users, Peel is a Mac-only program).

When you launch Peel, you’ll find that it’s pre-loaded with three MP3 blogs: Fluxblog, Said the Gramophone, and Music for Robots. At launch, Peel will check the blogs and download previews of the songs posted at those sites.

Listen and Download MP3s from MP3 Blogs

To see the MP3s at a given blog that you’ve subscribed to, just click on the blog’s name on the left. The MP3s posted there will show up on the right. You can listen to them by double clicking the file or using the play/pause button at the top of the window (just like in iTunes). If you decide you want the file, download it by highlighting the song name and then clicking the down arrow icon at the bottom right of the window.

Subscribing to MP3 Blogs

To add new blogs to check, just click the plus button at the bottom left and enter the website address and name in the pop-up window.

Now you’ll be subscribed to that blog and Peel will check it for songs for you (You can even visit the website of the blog by launching your browser from within Peel).

Adding Files to iTunes

Files can be downloaded to your Desktop or Documents folder for manual addition to iTunes of they can be automatically added to iTunes when you download them. You can change these settings in the Preferences window, found under the Peel menu at the top left corner of the screen.
In Preferences, you can even enable the Apple remote control to adjust volume in Peel.

So, for those of you who have fallen in love with MP3 blogs, but have a hard time keeping up with them, Peel is a great solution.