WFMU's Free Music Archive
July 15, 2008 6:56 AM   Subscribe

WFMU's Free Music Archive, "an online digital library of music that will allow music fans, webcasters and podcasters to listen, download, and stream for free, with no restrictions, registration or fees. And it will all be legal." Still pre-launch, but there's already quite a bit of music available on the site, including a sampler CD.
posted by cog_nate (18 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
Other sites of interest that are linked from the Free Music Archive are Excavated Shellac ("world", folk and classical), the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project (previously) and Penn Sound (previously, mainly Poetry).
posted by cog_nate at 6:56 AM on July 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


My only complaint about all this is that they keep pushing back the launch date. First it was June, then "summer", then November. Cant they get their shit together??????
posted by wheelieman at 7:13 AM on July 15, 2008


I love WFMU. They kick so much ass that there's hardly any ass left unkicked. They were my first internet webcrush.
posted by not_on_display at 7:29 AM on July 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Cant they get their shit together??????

Hey, man, it's still college radio, know what I'm saying???????

:)
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:30 AM on July 15, 2008


Wow, Excavated Shellac is totally bookmarked.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:31 AM on July 15, 2008


Can't I already do this with Last.fm? I guess I can't download...is that the difference?

From the FAQ:

If everything’s free, how will this benefit artists and labels?

Artist, album and song profiles will contain links to buy the full album from the artist and/or label’s preferred vendor(s).


So the word "archive" is maybe a little misleading. They don't aim to be even close comprehensive (which would be an unreasonable, if natural, expectation on my part because of the word "archive"), because then I wouldn't need to buy the "full album" from anyone.
posted by DU at 7:33 AM on July 15, 2008


Hey, man, it's still college radio, know what I'm saying???????

Not for 13 years, it isn't.
posted by unmake at 7:47 AM on July 15, 2008


DU, true enough. But you work at a university, right? If so, you may have access to DRAM. Unfortunately, it's not free and my university doesn't have a subscription to it, but it sounds so kickass I've been pushing my boss (the library's de facto collection development person) to spring for it. Check it out.
posted by cog_nate at 7:48 AM on July 15, 2008 [2 favorites]


...you work at a university, right?

Now now, people, let's not be memorizing every little thing I say. I'm actually a female albino sheep living in a cave on Mars. (There, that ought to throw my stalkers off.)

Wow, that DRAM thing is cool. Not that WFMU's isn't. I'm just trying to figure out the parameters. I really don't get what the difference is between these services. DRAM seems to be focused on "scholarly" (meaning, it appears, "classical").
posted by DU at 7:58 AM on July 15, 2008


(There, that ought to throw my stalkers off.)

Not if they work for New Zealand's space program!
posted by katillathehun at 8:37 AM on July 15, 2008 [2 favorites]


Thanks for the link, filled up on live sets from the Homosexuals, Times New Viking, the Bad Trips and, er, Psychedelic Horseshit.
posted by porn in the woods at 9:33 AM on July 15, 2008


cog_nate, you just exploded my head in slow motion with that comment pointing to DRAM. Very, very cool. Listening to Earl Hines play Ellington now. [THUMBS UP]
posted by not_on_display at 10:03 AM on July 15, 2008


If you use the internet and don't know about WFMU, yr not doing it right.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:36 AM on July 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Can't I already do this with Last.fm? I guess I can't download...is that the difference?

Mostly it has to do with copyright and licensing - you couldn't legally use a track from Last.fm in one of your podcasts or play it in your place of business or on your streaming radio station without several royalty rights organizations demanding some money from you for that use. (<axegrind>These are the same orgs often keep a lot of those fees for 'overhead' and wind up paying the artists just a tiny fraction of what they collect </axegrind>.)

With the WFMU archive, it's a much more relaxed, here-take-it-and-do-things-with-it-please setup. I imagine they'll have some sort of Flickr-ish set of copyleft-y guidelines for what is possible with each file, i.e. "OK to podcast" or "OK to mashup". But the general gist is that they're amassing a big pile of music that can be used by lowly peons like you and I for pretty much anything - without having to worry about royalty payments or copyright licensing.

This is an especially big help for people doing things with music online, where a lot of the legal fights are still being hashed out over things like how much money services like streaming radio or, say, Last.fm or iMeem should have to pay for their use of copyrighted music. The royal bitchfest between the NAB and MusicFIRST over the proposed performance right wouldn't exist if the stations were playing only music from an archive like WFMU's.

Also: unless I'm mistaken this WFMU thing was partially funded by one of Spitzer's radio payola settlements a few years ago. It is nice to see some of that cash doing the public some good.
posted by bhance at 2:29 PM on July 15, 2008


Not for 13 years, it isn't.

Well, I'll be damned, they graduated! It's been exactly 13 years since I moved very far away from NYC, though, so I guess I can be excused for not keeping up with such things...

There's still that old Italian fellow who sells egg creams and penny novels in front of the Vaudeville theatre down on 2nd Avenue, though, right?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:53 PM on July 15, 2008


Cant they get their shit together??????

Yeah, can't they give us great free shit as fast as we want?

This is great, on whatever timetable. Thanks.
posted by Rykey at 5:25 AM on July 16, 2008


bhance, you are mistaken.

WFMU: Freeform/Listener Supported, period. no cash flows from anywhere besides we the Listeners.

(im wearin my "WFMU/Sound of Quality" tshirt right now, btw..)

>Also: unless I'm mistaken this WFMU thing was partially funded by
> one of Spitzer's radio
>payola settlements a few years ago.
posted by The_Auditor at 7:08 PM on July 16, 2008


The_Auditor, you are actually the one who is mistaken.

WFMU received a $400,000 grant from the New York State Music Fund to create and maintain the Free Music Archive.

There is some confusion about whether or not this is a contradiction of WFMU's stated values, but NONE of the grant money is used to fund FMU's operations as a radio station. It's a seperate, independent fund, of which FMU is the curator of.
posted by melorama at 10:27 PM on July 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


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