Free Music. Legal, Too.
Forget that new three-tiered price plan from iTunes. Get your music free from Gelman Library. Humanities Librarian Cathy Eisenhower writes:
The Library pays for it, but you can stream it for free through your desktop and create playlists–for yourself and/or your students. I’ve been listening to spoken word recordings in Smithsonian Global Sound this afternoon … All three databases are available via Aladin http://metalib.wrlc.org/ –categorized under Music, or search by database title.
Smithsonian Global Sound
Over 35,000 tracks of music, spoken word, and natural and human-made sounds. Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries includes the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of the legendary Folkways Records, Cook, Dyer-Bennet, Fast Folk, Monitor, Paredon and other labels. It also includes music recorded around the African continent by Dr. Hugh Tracey for the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University as well as material collected by recordists on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies.
Contemporary World Music
Allows searching and browsing of over 50,000 tracks by instrument, country, region, artist, genre, recording label, and other categories. Search, click, and listen to 50,000 tracks of reggae, worldbeat, neo-traditional, world fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing and jazz, and other genres. There is also traditional music—Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, gagaku, and more. The albums’ original liner notes are included, both in facsimile and as rekeyed, searchable text.
Classical Music Library
A fully searchable classical music resource—including tens of thousands of licensed recordings that users can listen to over the Internet. The audio selections are cross-referenced to a database of supplementary reference information. Selections range from the earliest Gregorian chants to works by modern composers—including symphonic music, vocal and instrumental music, choral works, and other forms. Content is published under licensing agreements with more than 30 music labels, including major labels and independents.
