The Freegal mp3 service (probably USA only)

http://www.freegalmusic.com/

this is tied in with public libraries, who pay for the mp3s that you download for free -- my library ststem lets you do three per week, at 256k.

i just picked out these tracks from freegal's avantgarde/experimental section:

The Usaisamonster, "Sunset at the End of the Industrial Age" (Sunset at the End of the Industrial Age)
Deep Listening Band, "Geocentric" (The Ready Made Boomerang)
Lol Coxhill, "Rasa Moods" (Ear of Beholder)

i've previously gotten tod dockstader, acid mothers temple, birchville cat motel, vibracathedral orchestra, robert ashley... good stuff.

. . . think i'd probably rather buy/steal it myself than place a further burden on public libraries that already have enough problems? i dunno, i'm sure it's not much money i guess

public libraries are already burdened whenever you place a hold on a book and they have to pay for gas/maintenance to transport it to your local branch. does that mean we should stop using their hold system?

no, but i find bringing me a book to be a more important core service for which the internet has yet to offer a good alternative?

sorry, i'm not trying to be militant about stuff when you were just showing ppl a cool option for music!

i guess i don't get that upset about libraries having to pay for something i get for "free" when i'm already paying taxes to get that free service -- i'd happily pay more in taxes if that were an option! this is win-win. the library gets my money, the artists get the library's money. and because of the weekly limit, the expense is only a few bucks at a time.

yeah but there isn't a 'do you want taxes to go up and more money to go to libraries' button that you get to press

I mean sometimes there is

anyway mookster otm

it's called a voting lever.

ya but what are your local representatives views on this particular service? or like you might vote on some bond measure for building a new library but you will not be voting on a freegal bond measure

I'm glad you like it, get bent. I've been meaning to publicize this service to the kids at my library, but have been too busy and haven't gotten around to it. Libraries are actually desperate for "relevancy," so if you used this service, MP and iatee, you might be helping them more than you know.

I don't know the specifics of the deal, but I imagine libraries aren't paying that much--if anything--maybe the music publishers are using it as a form of advertising, since its only 3 songs per week. I haven't tried it myself--I find a lot of the library-interfaced downloading clunky, but let me check it out.

The thinking on this thread is p weird. Do you guys not makes requests for new media either? Or check out brand new books? Using any library service costs the library money.

I am sure they get some kind of batch deal for freegal, though the even thinking about thinking about the logistics of it zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (library school dropout here)

when you're doing stuff that doesn't even require you to go to a library, the library itself loses relevance

arguably you could do any of the library stuff outside the library? most people do, it's weird.

no, but i find bringing me a book to be a more important core service for which the internet has yet to offer a good alternative?

Also it's hard not to read something like this as "I haven't figured out how to steal books yet" – not that I'm saying that's what mookie is saying. MP3s kind of feel like a nothing thing because illegal downloading for-ev-er has robbed them of their perceived value.

right, which is one of the problems for libraries today, but getting into the biz of stuff that you can quite clearly do w/o a library seems like the single worst possible use of library funds xp

free gal costa music

iatee you're silly

idk they want to have something for everyone, relevance – like VP said. Just because it's a library service you think is a piffle doesn't mean it's an invalid one.

When I went to library school there were so many inane debates about "how do we make people visit libraries and see them as vital and useful" and I guarantee 99 percent of the ideas everyone proposed were a lot stupider than this.

I don't think it's a piffle I just think libraries need to focus their $ and energy on things that websites can't do

ok

like this might make people think library.com is a vital and useful website, but it is not getting people to the library, and that is ultimately bad for libraries

libraries have had more things than just books in them since, well, i'm not sure how long, but a very long time. and now libraries everywhere - as well as museums and university collections and monuments etc etc - are making those resources available to people through the internet

My library has a thing where they bring in a dog and kids read to it.

I don't think it's a piffle I just think libraries need to focus their $ and energy on things that websites can't do

like ... ?

i mean websites can provide books for free too

ya and I am pro making resources available through the internet, extremely pro, however mp3s have already been made available through the internet both legally and illegally xp

iatee find something else to do than shit on threads that aren't about the thing you want to talk about

xp

what if libraries have some mp3s that other people don't

should i teach my grandfather who can't leave the house but loves the library to use limewire?

The Visual Information Access (VIA) system is a union catalog of visual resources at Harvard, focusing on artistic and cultural materials.

VIA includes catalog records for objects or images owned, held or licensed by Harvard. Access to the catalog is open to the general public: all catalog records and thumbnail images are available to everyone

someone tell harvard about google images!!!

quick, find a blogger who lives in a densely populated urban area, harvard will surely listen to them

I am pretty sure your grandfather will find using this program exactly as difficult as learning limewire or itunes

you're right ... i mean you do know him so much better than i do

anyway itunes costs money, just like the ebook store

look there is a cost to using $ in this way, that money could be used to hire more librarians or for more actual in person programs or for improving the library as a public space. libraries can do lots of things that itunes can't. but this is essentially just 'the gov't is paying for a bit of your mp3-buying budget'...which is fine, I can see an argument for that, it's just not how we should be spending money allocated for libraries.

We have this at the library I work at. The partrins love it and our usage is constantly increasing each month. It's limited to Sony titles (which actually envelops quite a umber of labels. This is a great service for libraries in that our users don't actually have to come to he library to benefit forms it's services. Same holds true for our downloadable e-book service.

that's not 'the libraries services' in that case, it's some website's services

it's just not how we should be spending money allocated for libraries.

you're right, we should be hiring qualified library scientists armchair quarterbacks who don't understand what a "public space" is

that's not 'the libraries services' in that case, it's some website's services

that encyclopedia is not a 'library service', it's a product of some company called britannica

oh I'm sorry I thought public libraries were public spaces, please enlighten me about how that is no longer true

Sorry meant to say "patrons" number (not umber.) and this is as valid a use of library budget money than anything else and plus, I am of the belief that libraries should concentrate on technology more and hire programmers rather than librarians. (and I'm a librarian.)

public space is a space used by the public, not a park. a swimming pool is a public space, true, but so is a city council meeting, which is why they broadcast them for free on television. the library of congress is a public space, which is why we can order books from them.

if the public cannot leave the home because of finances, health problems, transportation to reach the literal space of the library, then congrats to the library for extending "public space" into the homes of taxpayers who pay for the library via the internet

more like IDiatee imo

Idahoiatee

I just downloaded 3 Bing Crosby songs--its was fun!

iatee you did not actually use "please enlighten me" while talking to an adult did you? go grab some bench man you know better than that

Definition

Areas of usage
Most streets, including the pavement, are considered public space, as are town squares or parks. Government buildings which are open to the public, such as public libraries are public space. Although not considered public space, privately owned buildings or property visible from sidewalks and public thoroughfares may affect the public visual landscape, for example, by outdoor advertising.

i mean how do you want my grandfather's library to spend the money? relocating from a historic 50s ranch building to a walkable neighborhood?

no, I want it to spend money on community programs not mp3s

iatee has the information advantage

in the meanwhile late great, tell me more about public space, very interested in yr alt universe definition

ok, let's see. i recently took my students to the library. since they live in a non-walkable neighborhood it took, oh, about two and a half hours round trip of travel time even though it was only three miles.

now we could have spent the entire day in the library, enjoying the filtered light and comfortable furniture of the public space, giving friendly smiles to strangers at the long tables, looking at the bulletin board and engaging w a diverse and fascinating staff, as i do when i vist my branch.

instead we used the online catalog to reserve our books and just picked them up and walked back.

so the future of libraries is...a building where you pick up your pre-ordered books?

you would argue that expanding the online catalog would undermine the library since you can find that stuff more easily on the internet, and that the logistics of our field trip only bolstered an unnatural relationship to public space in the minds of my suburban students

it could be iatee, it could be

do you prefer the past of books?

but...what if someone came up w/ a way to transmit book-information that did not require going 3 miles

oh you mean the internet?

but then kids will not learn to read books.

or do you mean a car?

you still haven't told me about your community programs, or your community library, or how you help your community

also they will not know the library exists, iatee

some of them were sixteen and did not know the library existed in their town

Okay, this lady is kinda upset about it too.

http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/2011/04/just-say-no-to-freegal.html

Maybe it costs about $100,000/yr for a large public library system? I'd rather spend that money on getting back the online subscription to World Book (we still order the book sets), but directors are gonna get excited about sexy, shiny new products. It's a yearly subscription--the environment for digital downloads is constantly evolving--just because libraries are paying for it this year doesn't mean that they will be doing the same next year. I can't really blame libraries for trying to get a foothold in the digital market--it's going to be a learning process.

i don't trust anybody who titles their blog "amazingly informed and properly opinionated" but we should introduce her to iatee, she looks hot

xp

haha i remember when i was a kid i would make bigass lists of sci fi books out of the back of analog and omni magazine and whatnot and then my mom would drive to the library and park outside and start a ten-minute timer while i would run in and hurry to gather them all up before time was up

picture iatee the information gatekeeper: "ma'am, your son's not using the public space or community programs. shouldn't you be walking?"

let the record show I did not bring the suburbs into this discussion

I think libraries are probably even more valuable in places that don't have a lot of public space (ie..)

anyway let's go back to your definition of public space that doesn't include parks or libraries

you can create a new subset of urban planning that's like non-euclidian geometry

i never said that, i just said that the definition of public space wasn't a park, i.e. it wasn't literally about a physical space the public can access, but whatever. i mean, of course the physical spaces are public spaces too, but that's not all there is to it.

the economic argument against pay-per-use the librarian girl gives sounds pretty solid to me, especially in terms of "we're buying something for people instead of lending it", i thought this was a subscription service.

10k/100k licenses??! (note to self:must start competing service immediately)

like if the library has to pay when my grandpa downloads an ebook and when i download an ebook too, then yes, that's not going to work because they're competing w/ amazon

but that doesn't mean libraries shouldn't develop online services for their patrons, if they want to stay usable, they need to develop online services just like all businesses and public institutions

well I guess now that I'm right we can stop arguing

at the very least this thread resulted in an entirely new branch of urban planning

library patrons are a valuable market -- mp3 providers should be paying for the privilege of accessing that market. i can't believe these guys were able to reverse that equation.

yeah mp3 providers aren't really wielding much power these days

there has been a bit of thought in the urban planning community about how to integrate network spaces within meatspace. there's no definitive answer, but it's something cities have to consider -- euclidian planning/the new england style "catchment area" isn't enough for the 21st century. that means libraries have to expand their own definitions of what they are -- by being mindful of a whole new world of digital media, by understanding that people want flexibility in how they use libraries, whether that means going there and checking out books, or whether they can download materials from their own homes. university libraries already let academics download journal articles, to no detriment of the actual place where people go to browse the stacks.

i'll post more later; my tv show is starting.

there's no detriment to the actual place because...fewer people are there? at this point in a university library sure, it's ndb, but at small public libraries yes, fewer people is a detriment to the actual place.

in any case there is a difference between being mindful of digital media and...not being a library in any sense. this is 100k that's going from a library's budget into sony's pockets so people can have personal-use mp3s. I'm sure people love the service. they would also love if the library spent 100k on pizza, or just gave them 100k.

I agree that libraries have to expand their own definitions of what they are, I just think 'oh yeah, the library, that's a website that buys three mp3s for you' is probably not the right route. this is a skeezy business that's taking advantage of library higher ups who are freaked out about the future.

ndb = nbd

done 4 tonite

I can't really blame libraries for trying to get a foothold in the digital market--it's going to be a learning process.

exactly. and maybe there will be a system that's more cost-effective for the libraries, but it's better for them to experiment and get it wrong (which i'm not sure they have) than to wait years until they feel they've gotten it right.

anyway, i posted on twitter before that the "public good" aspect of freegal is the number one concern -- the provision of knowledge. and i include "entertainment" under the knowledge umbrella, as long as 50 shades of gray is available at the library. and i like what freegal can potentially teach people about the value of art. not that most people are inquisitive enough to figure out how the freegal model work, but for those who care, it could be meaningful that library systems that subscribe to this officially endorse paying artists for their work. yes, you could spend a couple bucks and get the same material from amazon (and make sure the artists get paid), but then you're supporting a giant corporation. why not use your library and be part of this digital-media experiment? i think libraries want to see whether this project will work.

Pretty dope service imo

is there a representative i can talk to that could make a motion to use public/library funds to host iatees "thoughts u can use" blog somewhere else

Okay, so I showed this to two rising 7th grade boys who were hanging around my desk. I searched for about 5 artists they were interested in, and none of them came up. Kevin's assessment? "Freegal sucks!"

introduce kevin to the flying luttenbachers; there's a bunch!

new week, new downloads: mahavishnu orchestra's between nothingness & eternity.

Kevin and Juan were briefly interested in "Call Me Maybe," but then got distracted by asking me to show them videos of various Coney Island rides.

It's not even the real "Call Me Maybe", right? Isn't it a cover?

mahavishnu orchestra's between nothingness & eternity

sick

you should check out the santana / mclaughlin covers of coltrane if you haven't yet

i got that cd for a dollar at the mountain view rasputin records, holla

nothingness / eternity i mean

yeah, an ex-bf had a copy of the mclaughlin/santana coltrane record; i remember it being good but i haven't heard it in over a decade.

x-post

Omigosh, you are so right. Kevin would have really been incensed. Luckily he gets enough amusement from teasing me about my nonexistent "grey hair" that I get from being "so old."

i used my latest round of freegal credits to get the tracks by david toop, scanner, and dj /rupture from this record:

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Melatonin-Meditations-On-Sound-In-Sleep/release/687462

my three for this week:

oneohtrix point never - physical memories
mouse on mars - the three unwanted alterations of the natlab archive
wobbly - clawing your eyes out down to your throat

best service ever

http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/03/05/36208/netflix-style-on-demand-streaming-movies-tv-audio/

it's about time the public library paid for my netflix account

vahid's points itt were so dumb. was his grandfather or uncle really a librarian, or was this all about him being mad cause he lives 3 hours away from his nearest library?

I liked how he argued w/ me for a day before he realized this wasn't a subscription service

http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/2011/04/just-say-no-to-freegal.html

Get Lucky
Genre: Pop
Label: Columbia
(P) 2013 Daft Life Limited under exclusive license to Columbia Records, a Division of Sony Music Entertainment

; )

cool, topic records label stuff now available

when going to the library means getting hot new daft punk singles for free everybody wins

we're up all night to get freebies