Classical MP3 repositories

January 5, 2005 5:47 AM

Are there any free repositories of classical music in mp3 format? I know there are a number of sites with sheet music, but I am looking for actual recordings.
posted by Orange Goblin to media & arts (12 comments total)

Soundclick
Shoutcast, streaming mp3s.
posted by mfbridges at 6:33 AM on January 5, 2005

ibiblio has a few classical music repositories that have MP3 in therm. My favorite is the Asian Classical Music MP3 archive. We've also been using a lot of ClassicCat lately.
posted by jessamyn at 7:14 AM on January 5, 2005

I went looking for classical mp3s a few months ago and asked around for good bittorrent trackers, etc. A lot of people told me to just go to the local library, since the quality & accuracy of id3 tags is usually very lacking on the classical mp3s that are available on teh internets.

It turns out they were pretty much right. If you have a vague idea what you're looking for, the library will probably have a dozen recordings of it by different international groups, ripe for the picking.

(I'm sort of embarassed to admit it, but it never occurred to me to actually leave the house!)
posted by bcwinters at 8:05 AM on January 5, 2005

It's not mp3 (and it may not even be free, but if it isn't, the fee is nominal), but Naxos streams all their recordings.
posted by kenko at 8:22 AM on January 5, 2005

I'm curious about links to those sheet music sites, OG. Please post them in this thread!
posted by five fresh fish at 10:22 AM on January 5, 2005

FYI, although the music is public domain, particular recordings are still copyrighted by the people who make them. This is why it's not easy to find free recordings of classical music on the web.

Re: Sheet music, check out Sheet Music Archive. They have quite a bit, unfortunately they only let you download 2 per day.
posted by knave at 10:23 AM on January 5, 2005

Gutenburg has more.
posted by Orange Goblin at 10:58 AM on January 5, 2005

mit
posted by dorian at 11:25 AM on January 5, 2005

mutopia is worth checking out for sheet music, again by the wonderful people at ibiblio. dorian, that MIT link is awesome but folks should know all the files are in ogg vorbis format. Totally playable via iTunes [for example] with a plug-in but unplayable on an iPod without conversion.
posted by jessamyn at 11:42 AM on January 5, 2005

actually, all of those mit files *should* be ogg vorbis, but the truth is most of them are still mp3. guess they still have not gotten around to making good on their convictions, osj.

vorbis plugin for osx/quicktime. lord knows why apple is so assy about supporting things like ogg. then again, my previously-beloved iriver is just as assy about supporting things like flac and musepack. my next portable player will most likely be a jetaudio/iaudio/cowon, those guys rock.
posted by dorian at 12:51 PM on January 5, 2005

The most comprehensive collection I've found is Karadar. After you search for music there you are directed to a rather clumsy download interface here. I find it is worth jumping through all the hoops because I have not seen such an extensive catalogue elsewhere (though the recordings are older). YMMV, of course.
posted by Urban Hermit at 1:12 PM on January 5, 2005

lord knows why apple is so assy about supporting things like ogg.

There's no compelling reason for them to bother. I have perhaps two or three Ogg files, which I downloaded out of curiosity. (After playing them, my primary reaction was, "Yep, that's music in there, all right.") Since I for all intents and purposes do not have any Ogg files, the fact that the iPod doesn't play Ogg files was not a major factor in my decision to purchase one. Now that I have the iPod, I don't download any Ogg files because I can't t play them on the iPod. And so when it's time for a new portable music player, I still won't have any Ogg files, so that won't be a feature I will consider important, and I'll likely buy another iPod.

I have only rarely seen Ogg files on Napster, SoulSeek, Kazaa, Usenet, et al. I've seen plenty of WMA files, but the iPod won't play those either. I'd suggest Apple support WMA before supporting Ogg, as it's obviously far more popular.
posted by kindall at 3:30 PM on January 5, 2005