Music Online

Listen for three times as long!

Last month, we did something huge: we tripled the size of our Music Online collection. You read that right: tripled. We added more than 400,000 new recordings to individual libraries, including 46,000 tracks into American Song, 61,000 tracks into Jazz Music Library, and 132,000 tracks into Contemporary World Music. We also added something entirely new, just for subscribers to the complete Music Online—Listening suite: nearly 140,000 recordings of 20th century popular music, including pop, punk, hip-hop, country, and musical theater.

We've also increased search speeds and functionality, and we've improved sound quality. We're not done yet: expect that track number to grow even more throughout this year!

For full details, visit our website to read the press release and learn more about Music Online.

Interface enhancement for Music Online

We've made an important change to the Music Online interface based on the feedback from our customers.

We've moved the drop-down list, which allows users to go directly to the individual music collections that make up Music Online, from the bottom of every page to the top.  It is now located on the upper left hand side of the page underneath the About | System Requirements links.

We hope this change makes it easier for users to understand that they can search each of the music collections individually, in their native interface, as well as on the cross-search Music Online platform at music.alexanderstreet.com.

Streaming music collections go mobile

We've just enabled mobile access to ALL of our streaming music collections, making it possible for patrons at subscribing libraries to listen using internet-enabled smart phones and other mobile devices. Mobile access options include QR codes (like the one below), automatic email or SMS text delivery, and navigating to a mobile-friendly URL. Every recording, album, and playlist can now be accessed on-the-go.

The QR code above can be scanned with with your smart phone, and will connect you directly to an e-album of music from the movie Pride & Prejudice. The e-album can then be streamed on your mobile device through August 31, 2010. QR readers are readily available as free or inexpensive add-on applications, and many mobile phones come with QR readers pre-installed. If your 3G mobile device is connected to the web but does not have a camera, you can simply go to http://goasp.it/austen to stream the e-album. To see other working examples of QR codes, check out the Resource Shelf.

Later in 2010, Alexander Street video collections will be streamed to mobile devices. For more information on mobile access, read the press release.

Music Advisory Rountable at ALA

If you're heading to ALA in Washington, D.C., why not give our music editors 45 minutes of your time at our Music Advisory Roundtable? Conveniently located in the Washington Convention Center, our roundtable gives you the chance to voice your opinion and provide feedback on our current and future music collections. In exchange for your time we'll give you the opportunity to win a one-year subscription.

Our streaming audio content will triple in size by the end of 2010, we have new features, functionality, and cross-search enhancements to tell you about, and we're lowering prices. Be among the first to hear about all of it by attending this advisory roundtable and giving us your input!

The Music Advisory Roundtable is one of five roundtables we're hosting at ALA. You can learn more and RSVP here.

New music content uploaded

New content has been added to several of our music listening and music reference collections. Subscribing customers can access the new additions immediately within the following collections:

• African American Music Reference: 1,317 pages in 15 titles from Chelsea House Publishers,
  Hampton Institute Press, and David McKay. New titles include:
  
  • Traditional Black Music Series (13 volumes) by Jerry Silverman (sheet music including spirituals, slave songs, songs of protest and civil rights)
  • Sheet music of hymns and religious folk songs published by
    Hampton Institute Press
  • Echoes of Africa in Folk Songs of the Americas (Beatrice Landeck)
  • African American Music Reference now totals 34,112 pages
• American Song: 912 tracks from 40 albums of traditional folk songs, rural blues, gospel hymns, and more. Highlights include:
  
  • 9 volumes of traditional folk songs recorded specifically for American Song by folk singer Jerry Silverman. These folk songs were collected and published in his Folk Song Encyclopedia. These are the recordings that complement the sheet music in the Encyclopedia. Liner notes for the songs include a description of the folk song plus the complete lyrics.
  • Country/rural blues from Takoma Records
  • I'm Going Down to North Carolina - The Complete Recording of the Red Fox Chasers, 1928-31, from Tompkins Square Records
• Classical Music Library: 3,528 tracks from 258 albums from Bridge Records, Celestial Harmonies, and Mark Custom Records, We’ve added 1,300 new compositions to the collection, including wind ensemble/wind symphonies, choral music, contemporary music by Luciano Berio, David Rakowski, and more. Examples of new albums include:
  
  • David Rakowski: Etudes, Vol. 3
  • Three Quartets: The Apollo Saxophone Quartet
  • Theme and Variations: Improvisations On Children's Songs
  • H. Kling: 40 Characteristic Etudes for French Horn
  • Susan Levitin, Gerald Rizze: 20th Century American Duos for Flute & Piano
  • The American Impressionist Organ
• Jazz Music Library: Additional indexing has been completed for over 1,000 albums in Jazz Music Library. We released new fields, including complete instrumentation, subgenres, and biographical data for these albums.
• Classical Scores Library: 9,716 pages from 205 scores from Faber Music, Ltd., and Universal Edition. New scores include compositions by Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson, Alban Berg, Victoria Borisova-Ollas, Anne Boyd, Arcangelo Corelli, Colin Matthews, Robert Schumann, Peter Sculthorpe, Carl Vine, Carl Maria von Weber, and more. Classical Scores Library now contains 14,757 scores and 318,263 pages.

Music Online now contains:

• 254,372 tracks (US/Canada customers) / 219,704 tracks (non-US/Canada customers)
• 17,644 albums (US/Canada customers) / 15,155 albums (non-US/Canada customers)
• 62,029 pages of text reference
• 16,764 scores (318,263 pages)
• 407 videos

To request a price quote or free trial to Music Online, or any of the individual music collections, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

Downloading available in Classical Music Library

If you're a Classical Music Library subscriber, you're probably familiar with the new interface by now. We've made slight adjustments over the past few months based on your feedback, adding useful functionality such as the "browse by composer" option. Now, libraries have the option to enable downloading from Classical Music Library.

Most tracks in Classical Music Library are available for purchase, however a few labels do not allow their recordings to be downloaded. The cost to download varies depending on the length of the track. The average cost per track is about $1.00. If your library has enabled downloading, you will see this download icon next to available tracks.

If you're a longtime subscriber to Classical Music Library and you had downloads enabled on the old platform, you'll notice significant improvements to the download process. All download transactions are now completed through Google Checkout. Purchasing tracks from Classical Music Library has never been easier.

And as always, all purchased downloads are stored permanently in the "My Downloads" folder in Classical Music Library. You can save the track to any location on your computer as many times as you want.

More information on downloading tracks from Classical Music Library can be found here.

If you are a librarian and would like to enable downloads for your institution, please email support@alexanderstreet.com.

Music Online is going mobile!

What's better than hundreds of thousands of audio recordings, videos, scores, and pages of full-text music reference?  How about accessing it all on the go?

In 2010 Alexander Street's entire music portfolio will be accessible on iPhone and iPod Touch mobile devices. Subscribers will be able to stream music and video, access scores, search and navigate full-text reference content, and even access and edit personal playlists.

Alexander Street's iPhone and iPod Touch application will be completely free. Updating your playlists or listening to an assigned recording will literally be just a touch away. And thanks to newly developed streaming technology, you'll do it all without buffering.

Look for Alexander Street's iPhone app in 2010 on our Web site, on this blog, and through the iTunes store.