Free Music Downloads from Spokane Library

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).

Les Misbarack: Showtunes for Obama?

A friend passed along a YouTube video from the Ultimate Improv group, using "One Day More" from Les Miserables as a political parody. It's the night before the election, the scene is the Obama election headquarters. A couple of campaign workers realize their time together might be over, and in comes McCain and Palin singing Javier and Mrs. Thernardier. Yes, it's true that most theatre people I know are 'liberals' and Democratic liberals at that, so the Obama support shouldn't surprise people. Nonetheless it's a cute job of lip-syncing no matter the political position.


While at that political video I noticed another for "Do You Hear the People Sing." Made by someone else, this takes images of anti-war protests and from the economic difficulties that some still term a "downturn" and uses it to connect the Bush administration to McCain and boost Obama.


By the way, while I'm on the topic of YouTube videos, there are several videos of musical theater productions or homemade videos of famous movie or TV clips put to the tune of a musical, such as Avenue Q's "The Internet is for Porn" setting for images of Harry Potter movies.