My city library is part of an internet music service called "Freegal Music Service" that we can access with our library card numbers. It has a lot of albums from a lot of artists (not everything that I would want by any stretch of the imagination, but a whole bunch) that you can stream or download for free. If I read the info correctly, different libraries have different deals for their members. Ours is unlimited streaming and five free song downloads per week. I think some libraries limit streaming and/or have different download limits. Five isn't a whole bunch, but with my wife, we have ten per week - kind of like a free album. If I am getting one with more than ten songs, I wait until Sunday night to get the first half, and get the rest Monday when my download limit renews. I can also trust that it is above board as far as legality goes, since I doubt that my public library would be telling me to break the copyright laws.
It is not the greatest thing that ever happened, but you can listen to all kinds of stuff risk-free (monetarily speaking) and maybe get some of the albums that you only ever had on vinyl in a digital format without buying them again.
Most ABB stuff on there is stuff most people on this forum are going to already own, but I was surprised a little to see that they have all the archival series releases. I couldn't believe that they have nearly all the Hot Tuna and Jorma Kaukonen "Instant Live" shows on there. Other artists have very little or nothing on there.
Anyway, just thought I would let people that might not know about it know about it. It might be worth inquiring with your public library to see if they are part of it.
Anyone else already use it?
Yeah man, its pretty neat. I have found some interesting stuff on there. Recently got the soundtrack of "The Good The Bad and The Ugly" , very cool, am a fan of Ennio Morricone. And some early 60's French pop, Francoise Hardy, and so on. Stuff you would never think to look for. Never even thought to look for Hot Tuna, that's rad! Double rad, since Jorma must have blessed the Freegal release of his stuff, as he is dead set against file-sharing. It's all MP3, so it isn't lossless, but ok bitrate, usually 256kbps, plenty good for ipod.
Re the library, their cd collections are unreal too, and they will also order cd's for you.
... Wow! just checked on Freegal, there are tons of Tuna shows there! You can't find live Tuna anywhere on the web, they are ultra strict about it, like the ABB. Thanks Jorma! very cool.
[Edited on 8/17/2016 by BrerRabbit]
No I have not. Thank you for posting about this.
I'm going to tell my local public library about this and see if they sign up for it. I did look up the service for my area on the Freegal site and they have a local library here listed but your library card has to be from that exact library which is a bit odd since all the libraries here are on the same system of software, and they are all together.
Yes, I used it for years and had 4 library cards in the house.. It contained a lot of obscure stuff. With all the music options out there now like spotify probably less demand now.
