Comments on: Music in Libraries: We’re Doing It Wrong

By: Music: a place for libraries | Library Lander: a production of Katherine Kerber

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:04:01 +0000

[...] Houghton, S. (2010, September 6). Music in libraries: we’re doing it wrong. Librarian in black. Retrieved from http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/2010/09/music-in-libraries-were-doing-it-wrong.html [...]

By: Thomasina

Thomasina — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:56:54 +0000

Thanks so much for this discussion! As a patron, I do not expect my library to provide music for me to keep for free at their expense! But music I can only keep a few weeks makes little sense either, unless I was just previewing songs I may want to purchase on my own. What feels right to me would be if the library could offer unlimited streaming on my computer and smart phone, perhaps in combination with an optional download service that limits the number of “checked out” downloads at a time to a reasonable number if we think in terms of albums (so maybe 30-40 songs) and which expire after several weeks.

By: Pioneer’s Steez Music Players - Making Music

Pioneer’s Steez Music Players - Making Music — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 01:16:58 +0000

[...] It transforms the music library of a dancer and enables them to really make the music their own.If you like music and you like to move around while you listen to it, it can be hard to find a way t…Steez range of music players from Pioneer. They are portable and have been designed with the [...]

By: Diana Miranda

Diana Miranda — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:57:35 +0000

Thanks for starting this discussion and your other post about Freegal. I am wondering: is there such thing as paying for music streaming for library patrons? Is there a provider that would let us do that as a library?

By: Diana Miranda

Diana Miranda — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:57:08 +0000

Thanks for starting this discussion and your other post about Freegal. I am wondering: is there such thing as paying for music streaming? Is there a provider that would let us do that?

By: Sarah

Sarah — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:14:20 +0000

@Jason – Denmark & other countries in Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, Iceland) have some seriously awesome stuff happening, largely because they don’t have the same type of copyright laws to compete with as we do in the US, nor do they have as huge a market (so it would seem recording companies & movie companies are more willing to do business with non-consumer markets). That’s my guess!

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:15:57 +0000

BibZoom looks like exactly the kind of service that libraries would want – streaming, major label input and it looks like a good simple interface from the videos on YouTube. It’s a pity my Danish is about as good as my Kazakh. Does anyone have any idea what it is about Denmark that has enabled them to get something like this up and running?

By: Dorothy Sieradzki

Dorothy Sieradzki — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:35:15 +0000

We’ve just acquired Freegal, using Friends of the Library funds. We made the decision before Freegal announced unlimited downloads. I’m no more troubled about “giving away” music as I am with many Overdrive titles that can be burned, or with the resources spent on the few patrons who take advantage of ILL. It’s a new world out there we can either be part of it or bury our collective heads. Next year (I bet) Freegal will have competition.

By: Chad Mairn

Chad Mairn — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 00:07:47 +0000

The mainstream music industry has failed and other industries can learn a lot from their mistakes. They probably won’t unfortunately. Nonetheless, it is better for music lovers, in my opinion, because now there are many ways to discover and share excellent music that exists way outside the mainstream. If you are interested in music culture and media then definitely check out Bob Lefsetz. I think he is brilliant and you can read some of his writings at http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/. Anyway, I have not yet seen a good music subscription model for libraries. I use Rhapsody and absolutely adore it because I can listen to most anything at anytime and unlimited for less than $15 a month! I wish libraries could have a similar model, but I don’t see that ever happening. It has been said many times, but OverDrive’s music collection is horrible. I’ve looked at the other services mentioned and quite frankly they are pretty bad too especially when you are a music snob like me. It will be impossible to compete with iTunes, Google’s soon-to-be music store, Rhapsody, Spotify, Mog, and the many others out there and our vendors know it.

So, what should libraries do? Should they offer music downloads that aren’t very appealing and that dissolve after 2 weeks? I don’t think so, but I could be wrong and it wouldn’t be the first or the last time.

One easy thing that you can do is digitize your CD collection and create music listening stations. Of course, it takes time but it is mindless work. I have ripped several thousand songs into iTunes and connected 2 cheap PCs together so that they can share 1 music library. Anyone can access the collection (up to 5 simultaneous users) via our wireless network too if they have iTunes installed. So, library patrons can listen to music before they check out the CDs similar to the way Borders, Barnes and Noble and other stores do. By the way, I did lock down these PCs so that our users can’t copy our entire music collection; but, of course, they could rip the CDs anytime they want to. I wrote a blog post on this project back in 2008 if you are interested: http://spclibraryblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-itunes-music-listening-stations.html. I recently added Pandora, Last.FM, thesixtyone.com, and other free music services on these listening stations so our users can discover new music and either acquire it on their own (I don’t ask questions) or simply ask us to purchase it on CD. Don’t laugh, but yes we still buy CDs. FYI: I am revisiting the clunky web page that I created using the iTunes .xml file and XSLT so that users can listen to 30 second music samples of our CD collection from outside the library. I may use Orb too. Who knows? As we all know, there are so many free tools out there to help bring visibility to vanishing CD collections. Oh, and I want to include links to these samples in our OPAC.

There has been some excellent ideas mentioned here and I look forward to more.

Cheers!

By: Bill Taylor

Bill Taylor — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:42:28 +0000

I’m with Scott D: I have a big philosophical problem with public libraries paying for Freegal for their customers. To me, the essence of a library is the sharing of the collection by the entire community. By using Freegal (or any other similar service) a public library is buying songs to give away permanently to a limited number of individuals. Of course the customers love it! I’m surprised there hasn’t been much protest from library funders — county governments, library boards, etc. If I were in their position I would look askance at this use of community resources.

Over many decades, public libraries have carved out a beautiful and very useful model of communal ownership. Let’s keep working on ways of applying that model to online content; I really don’t think buying the stuff to give away is the answer. The Danish service that Esben Fjord mentioned looks like a great idea. I’d love to know more — what’s the business model? How is it administered? A quick Google search doesn’t turn up very much written in English about it — let’s hope we’ll hear a lot more.