Interesting news for music fans in the City of Spokane: Download three songs a week from the Sony catalog for free, to keep. Legally. THE CITY OF SPOKANE PAYS FOR THIS! It simply requires a valid/current Spokane City Library card. (Which reminds me to renew....)
This is a new subscription service called Freegal (rhymes with legal). "It includes a variety of musical styles such as classical, jazz, rock and pop." AND MUSICAL THEATER CAST ALBUMS! Downloads begin MID-JULY (2011).
"Customers will be able to download three songs a week for free, to keep. Because there are no digital rights management issues the songs are not loaned, they are just available. We pay for the service, just like we pay to buy books, DVDs and CDs in order to provide them to customers. One of the reasons the library selected this service was because it is very customer friendly.
Some of the aspects of the service that make it customer friendly:
* mp3 format (no confusion about competing formats)
* web-based (no software to download)
* use in library or your own computer
* works on PCs AND Macs
* vast collection increases offerings to customers"
Because of that last section, I hope this doesn't mean that the library will stop purchasing tangible materials. I have found many unusual, rare, highly out-of-print items in libraries around the country. (I've also purchased items that libraries chose to cull from their collections because no one was borrowing them. Horror!)
Bottom line - visit your local library. Music theater fans will probably be very impressed at what they find. Just be prepared to find them in the SOUNDTRACKS section (shudder).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment