I am wondering what is likely to happen if i made a blog where i would make songs available? Not in a "here are a thousand albums to download for free", but more discussing a single song in a blog post and embedding it in a playable state (and thus also downloadable) served directly from my server (and not some spotify / soundcloud / whatever link).

The blog would not be anonymous, it would be possible to trace the server and everything directly to me. Blog would likely be obscure and not grow much. There would be no ad revenues. I am based in norway (in europe, not in the eu but in the eea in case you are not aware).

Am i looking at a couple of dmca takedown requests, legally enforceable fines, lawsuits? I dont expect to get legal advise i can use as a basis for my defense in a potential legal case in the future, but just wanted to know if you had any insights in what could happen.

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[–] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 days ago

I don't know Norway copyright law, but DMCA really isn't the issue. This comes down to basic International music copyright. DMCA is just an enforcement mechanism in the US for that. Assuming this blog site is in the US and that's why you mentioned it, note that you are also liable for any punishments in your country of residence. Usually these are fines per download/stream which can easily total millions or billions of dollars for even just a few songs downloaded or streamed often.

That said, if your site doesn't catch anyone's attention, then it all comes down to if you want to risk being that one easy target that gets made an example of. If you're OK with that risk, then the most likely thing to happen is the blog host site will get a takedown notice and take down the post or ban you from the site. Unless the song is protected with logins or is hosted on an obscure site, it's likely not to take very long to find by either the blog host or the record company.

The only way to avoid this would be if you have a valid fair-use argument for why you should be allowed to keep it up. But note, the way fair use works in most countries is you're still breaking the law, it's just a defense, so you still may need to go to court to present that defense and lawyers are expensive.