Our streaming Music Online collections, powered by Alexander Street Press, have recently added tons of great new content. You'll find these collections listed on both our Digital Media and Database pages. If you're new to the service, we have six streaming music collections you can access with your library card number and PIN:

• American Song - Hear and feel the music of America's past. Includes songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers, and cowboys, as well as the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war protests, and more.
• Classical Music Library - The world's largest multi-label database of classical music. Includes recordings from Hyperion, Bridge Records, Sanctuary Classics, Artemis-Vanguard, Hänssler Classic, Vox, and many more. Find music written from the earliest times (e.g. Gregorian Chant) to the present, including many contemporary composers. Repertoire ranges from vocal and choral music, to chamber, orchestral, solo instrumental, and opera.
• Contemporary World Music - Explore sounds from every continent: reggae, worldbeat, neo-traditional, world fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing and jazz, as well as traditional music - Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, gagaku, and more.
• Jazz Music Library - The largest and most comprehensive collection of streaming jazz available online — with thousands of jazz artists, ensembles, albums, and genres.
• Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries - Produced in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, this is a virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions.
• Music Online - Search and browse across all of our Alexander Street Press collections from one simple interface.

There is far too much great music here to pick favorites; you really need to check it out for yourself. But here are a few personal highlights to get you started:

Ethiopiques Volume 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale 1969-1974 - This wonderful collection of instrumental Ethio Jazz was recorded in the Ethiopian cultural boom during the final years of the reign of the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie. Partly familiar to western ears accustomed to jazz, yet alluringly exotic and distinctly African, many will recognize these songs from the 2005 Bill Murray, Jim Jarmusch film, Broken Flowers. Find it in the Contemporary World Music collection or make it a pair with The Rough Guide to World Music by Simon Broughton. 

Now Here's Johnny Cash - Johnny Cash left Sun Records in 1958 to sign with Columbia, and three years later he was a bigger star than ever and well on his way to becoming a music legend. Sun, naturally, wanted to take advantage of Cash's growing popularity, and 1961's Now Here's Johnny Cash was his final Sun release. Browse the American Song collection to find many more great releases from Sun records by luminaries like Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Howlin' Wolf. Read more about Johnny Cash and Sun Records in these books by Michael Streissguth and Colin Escott.

The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death - Ask a guitarist about John Fahey and prepare to watch them slowly succumb to alternating paroxysms of frustration and joy. Frustration because John Fahey's just so impossibly good and joy because...well, because he's just so impossibly good. Of course, there is healthy debate over which record of Fahey's classic Takoma Records period is his best (1968's Voice of the Turtle gets my vote) but fear not, they're all here. Find John Fahey in the American Song collection. Want to feel that joy and frustration yourself?  Check out Fingerstyle Guitar by Brian Gore.

Black Saint and the Sinner Lady - Alexander Street's Jazz Music Library could be the single strongest streaming collection we offer. It's so good, in fact, that I found it nearly impossible to pick a highlight. But by any standard Charles Mingus's 1963 Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is just that. You'll find more by Mingus, as well as the full host of jazz luminaries, not to mention another 10,756 albums and 133,668 tracks of jazz righteousness in our Jazz Music Library. For more on Mingus, take a look at Myself When I am Real: the life and music of Charles Mingus by Gene Santoro. 

In C - Like picking a favorite from the Jazz Music Library, choosing a highlight from Alexander Street Press's Classical Music Library is a daunting task. Terry Riley's In C has been in my rotation lately, but if 20th century classical is not for you, you'll find music here from Beethoven to Britten as well as everything between and beyond. Not sure where to start? Another great feature of the Alexander Street products is their playlists. Playlists are assembled by ASP's editors and serve as a great way to introduce yourself to new music. Or, you can login to make your own playlists and share them with the rest of us. Make a reading connection with Terry Riley’s In C by Robert Carl.

Of course, these choices do not even begin to scratch the surface of all the great music the Free Library offers through Alexander Street Press. Please visit our Digital Media or Database page get started. Then, share your favorite discoveries with us in the comments below.

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Tags: databases, music

In our continual effort to better serve you, a team of librarians has recently taken a fresh look at our many electronic resources and databases, and has recommended some changes. Public library services have shifted dramatically over the past few years, with not only greatly reduced budgets but also a growth in the information you can connect to online.  Ultimately, we recognize that our electronic databases must be relevant to your needs and provide the excellent library service you deserve.

To that end we will no longer be subscribing to a small selection of our current databases. But don’t worry—we’ve got you covered! The vast majority of the content available in these databases is also available in similar form at freelibrary.org and through other free resources, like Pennsylvania’s PowerLibrary. 

The databases we will no longer be subscribing to include:

• Freegal (ending as of June 1)
• EBSCOhost, which includes MasterFile Premier, Middle Search Plus, Primary Search, ERIC, Novelist Plus, and Novelist K-8 Plus (ending as of July 1)
• Dun & Bradstreet’s Million Dollar Database (ending as of August)

These changes will allow us to focus more on the types of services you value most and continue to be a library that is responsive to your needs.  In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be posting a helpful series of blogs that details just where you can find all the information you need, so check back often to learn how you can maximize your Free Library experience.

To get you started, read our post on Freegal and the many digital music resources available to you through the Free Library and online!

 As always, we welcome your feedback.

Tags: databases, digital collections, music

This is a great time for music lovers. Not so long ago, we had relatively few choices when it came to how we heard our music. We could buy it, which is ideal if you’re sure you’re going to like it once you get it home; listen to the radio or watch MTV, OK as long as you’re content to hear what someone else decides you should hear; or go see it live, again wonderful, but depending on where you live and the kind of music you like, maybe not possible.  And those examples only take into account our very recent history.  Go back much further and people who wanted to hear music had to play it themselves (also not such a bad option, as any musician will tell you). 

Now though, anyone with access to the Internet also has access to a nearly limitless amount of music, much of it free and entirely legal.  I don’t mean that online music can or should take the place of buying CDs and records, seeing music live, or making music yourself, just that it’s awfully nice to be able to satisfy your musical curiosity so easily.  So, while the Free Library will no longer be offering the Freegal database of downloadable music, there are still plenty of great ways to access your favorite tunes.

Let’s look at some of your options. 

Library Streaming Services
While music on the open web is great and the amount of content is growing every day, you still can’t find everything. That’s where the library can help. Check out our streaming music service over at the Download Media page. Online Music from Alexander Street Press is comprised of six individual collections focusing on jazz, classical, traditional, and world music.  You can stream all day, create playlists, and more.  A library card is required to login and a world of great listening awaits.

Online Streaming Services
Subscription services like Spotify, Pandora, and Last.fm are also a great way to hear music online. These services are free and supported by advertising – just like radio – except that here you get to choose what you want to hear.  Spotify lets you listen to the specific songs, artists, and albums you choose without limitations, while Pandora and Last.fm offer you the ability to create custom radio stations based on the music you love.  At the basic (ad-supported) level each of these services are free. Even better, all indications are that the market for streaming music online is about to get even bigger with recent reports that Amazon, Apple, and Google are all hoping to get into the market. 

Embrace the video wormhole!
As if listening to your favorite music weren’t addictive enough, there is also a nearly endless stream of music video on sites like YouTube and Vevo. Vevo is sponsored by three of the “Big Four” major record companies and serves up new music videos and hits from some pop’s biggest starts. YouTube, of course, is also a great source for today’s hottest videos, as well as your old favorites from the video era, but the real fun begins when you discover one of YouTube’s many hidden corners of music arcana.  From lost dance floor gems,  to Afro-rock greats, to forgotten Philadelphia A-sides, these fan created videos offer a music wormhole too fun not to allow yourself to fall into now and then. 

Of course, all this is only the beginning.  You can also find new music on aggregators like The Hype Machine; search out tomorrow’s hits on Bandcamp, or hear a little of everything on SoundCloud.  Please share your favorite sources for online music with us in the comments below. 

Tags: databases, music

The 55th annual Grammy awards were held this week in Los Angeles and the world was invited to sit on its collective couch and watch. Did the Grammys reaffirm your faith in pop music? Or like many in this age of increasingly fractured pop culture, where each of us is invited to delve ever deeper into our own pools of idiosyncratic taste, did you simply find yourself wondering, "Who are these people?"

Personally, I was surprised to discover that contrary to what I had thought, Mumford and Sons are not part of an elaborate J Crew advertising campaign, but are real band. Who knew?

Thankfully, the Free Library of Philadelphia has resources to keep me, and others like me, au courant. Head over to our downloadable media page and checkout Freegal. Freegal is a service that allows Free Library card holders to download three free MP3 each week. Once downloaded, these files are yours to keep. That's Freegal - free and legal.

Here are just a few of the Grammy winners and nominees you'll find at Freegal:

•  Mumford & Sons
• Adele
• Kelly Clarkson
• Usher
• Beyoncé
• Carrie Underwood
• Jack White
• P!nk
• Alabama Shakes
• Miguel 

Tags: databases, music