Classical music downloads: free, legal, and complete

[Don Claybrook]

Hello, and a happy New Year to everyone.

If you've ever tried to download classical music from the Kazaa-type services, you know that you're able to find the popular stuff, but not necessarily the accompanying music, e.g., you could find Mvmt. 2 of Beethoven's 7th, but might have a hard time finding Mvmts 1, 3, and 4.

So I come bearing party favors.

There's a download site, a university in Italy, that has something like 16,000 classical pieces, and they're complete symphonies, concertos, ballades, mazurkas, ballets, operas, and the like. The university site claims that all of the music is legal, and I have no reason to doubt them. While most classical music is in the public domain (in the US anyway), the performances of it are mostly covered by copyright. Anyway, they say it's legal and that's good enough for me.

The site can be very slow during the US Eastern weekday daytime hours (leading me to believe most of the clientele is from the US). If you wait until about 9PM Eastern or after, you'll usually get better download speeds. During the day, I'll often get IE download speeds around 5 or 6 K per second. Late at night, it will get over 100K per second, occasionally.

You're limited to downloading 100MB per day, but if you hit your limit, just log out and create a new username/password and you can start on another 100MB.

I will post 2 URL's here. The first is the actual download site. The second contains a good index of what's found at the download site. The second is supposed to link you to the first, but the link is broken, so you'll need both. You could just use the download site as your only destination, but you'll see that you get a more easily-viewable index of available files at the other site.

Happy New Year, and happy downloading.

Actual Download Site: http://cocoa.itc.it:8080/cocoakaradar/
Index Site: http://www.karadar.it/Mp3composer/Default.htm

[Sequoia]

1. Well, thank you very much

and a Happy New Year to you also. This is really fun!

[Don Claybrook]

3. You're welcome...and a small confession

Since the site bandwidth seems to be very contentious, I didn't post this until I'd raided the place for pretty much everything I wanted. :)

On second thought, it's hard to imagine classical music fans trampling other fans to get to a website.

Oh, and one final note: most all of the downloads are at an acceptable bitrate of 128Kbps. They're all labeled as 128K, but some are actually 112 or even 96. Bummer, but better than nothing, and this is just a minority of the songs.

Enjoy.

[jpgray]

2. Whose performances are these?

If the performers did not agree to distribute their recordings in this way, I don't feel right about downloading these things. Unlike popular music record companies today, there are plenty of performers in the classical world whose talent is very worthy of my dollar.

[Don Claybrook]

4. Various

I've seen London and NY Phil. And I've seen the equivalent of the Prague Unemployed Pipefitters Orchestra on the site.

[jpgray]

5. Well, I might take a peek before I commit money to something

Thanks for the link, I just have a weird guilt-ridden conscience about this sort of thing. :crazy:

:D

[Don Claybrook]

6. From their FAQ

They seem to be indicating this is all old enough to be public domain, although I have a hard time believing the recordings are more than 70 years old. It'll never replace Telarc, but then again, I couldn't afford thousands for Telarc-labeled CD's right now either. Here's the appropriate snippet from the FAQ:



Is this music free? Will it remain free?
Yes, this music is free and yes the site will remain free.


How can all this wonderful music be free?
The majority of the mp3s in this collection are older as 70 years, and so they are free throughout the entire world (all images and music more than 70 years old are public domain and copyright free). The rest are mp3s of the last 5 years, but these are private recordings (by the distributor, Karadar, and his musician friends). For more information on these artists see www.Karadar.com.

[jpgray]

8. OK--just don't want to rob performers of well-earned rewards

As long as it's legit, I'm definitely down! Here's hoping they have a better selection than the libraries around here. Thanks again for putting up the link.

[Karenina]

7. AND if you look in the "classical bins"

It's cheap. I got the MOST INCREDIBLE recording of Telemann's "Darmstädter Ouverturen" for 5 marks. (At that time $2.50 US.) I must admit to a conflict about this issue. Never mind Mettalica leading the charge, whose big "Classical meets Heavy Metal" project was STOLEN (with the help of BMI) from a German band...

[OffWithTheirHeads]

9. O.K. heres the deal

Classical music is really hard to get a handle (no pun) on and lets face it, there are very few classical stations on the air these days. Add to that, that when you actually hear a piece on the radio it is usually followed by a very brief announcment telling you that this was " the fifth movement of opus 11 of the vergigstreiseer concherto # 7 in g4th minor by reigelderfestien von happyfarter performed on the Thomaschurcha by the acadimie of saint notsohappyfarter in the fields.

Try writing that down whole you are driving to work. First of all, you'll spell it wrong and your subsequent internet search will prove fruitless. Then, you will go to the record store and buy what you think may be the piece for $17.00, only to find out that what you actually got was the latest intrepretation of the piece by Deff Leapord.

Thank you immensly!!! I would be only too happy to sample the cuts for free and, after finding what pleases me, going out and buying exactly what I was looking for.

I have absolutly NO PROBLEM paying for good renditions of the music that I like. I have a BIG problem trying to guess which performance of what piece is the one that I actually enjoyed and paying $17.00 a pop for crap. In my opinion, this is more record company extortion and I am no longer willing to subsidize it.

Got something worth listening to? Lay it on me. If I think it's good, I will be more than happy to pay for it and, I think most people are honest and are willing to do the same. Are there crooks out there who will take advantage? Sure there are but how many of you paid big bucks for an album and only got two songs worth listening to?

And aside from all that, I have seen some pieces for sale for $60.00+. I mean mean-come-on. Do they want to sell music or just screw poople?

It's time for a new paradigm and we have the technology.

[Karenina]

10. BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Choke! Chortle!

GREAT post!!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR! :toast:

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

11. Oh man... "acadimie of saint notsohappyfarter in the fields" LOL

too nutty.

I find the whole thing with the two sites kind of confusing.

Anyone else?