Regular readers may remember that I wasn’t particularly impressed with the UK launch of Apple’s music download site, the iTunes Music Store, or indeed any of the legal download sites. Paying just under £8 for an album of low-bitrate mp3s (or similar) is ludicrous, when you can get the “proper” CD of the same album for only a couple of quid more from Play.com or Amazon. The low bitrate is unnecessary, given the ever-falling price of server space and the ever-rising speed of our internet connections. Furthermore, the available music isn’t particularly unusual, so if your tastes lie outside of the High Street mainstream, you’re stuck with Ebay or illegal download networks. My general impression was of a poor implementation of a great idea.
But anyway, I’ve been meaning to write something about a link I’ve had sitting on my desktop for a few days (the origin of which I’ve forgotten… probably BoingBoing)…
The Smithsonian Global Sound website is an ingenious and worthwhile use of “music on demand” technology. For 99 cents (US) per track, you get to explore the vast historical archive of music held by the Smithsonian Institute. You can search by geographical region, culture group or musical instrument, and the downloads are in either mp3 or… wait for it… lossless flac format. Yay!