SUBSCRIPTION STREAMING AUDIO AND VIDEO DATABASES:
Naxos Music Library
A vast collection of recorded classical music available via streaming access. Originally consisting of the recordings on the Naxos label, it is now much broader. Classic pop, blues, contemporary instrumental, gospel, and rock music as well as Chinese orchestral music are also represented. Includes biographical information on composers or artists. Can be searched by keyword and more specifically by composer, work, genre and label.
Naxos Music Library Jazz
Includes recordings by legendary jazz artists and historic recordings; new selected titles of other leading independent labels are added every month. Contains more than 3000 CDs, and new CDs are added every month.
Met Opera on Demand
Delivers instant and unlimited streaming of more than 700 full-length Metropolitan Opera performances.
MUSIC DATABASES FROM ALEXANDER STREET PRESS:
Classical Music Library
This vast database of classical music is a competitor to Naxos Music Library.
Provides musical sound recordings and MIDI files, program notes, reference texts (composer biographies, history, and glossary), and images. The music includes vocal and instrumental works from the Middle Ages to the present. Users navigate through browse lists, a search engine and music track playlists.
Providing online listening to thousands of jazz artists, ensembles, albums, and genres, it is significant for jazz history, performance, theory, or music appreciation course. Labels include Verve, GRP Records, Fantasy, Concord Jazz, Impulse, Jazzology, and many others. The list of artists is enormous, ranging from past greats to musicians performing and recording today. Also included are Marian McPartland's Peabody Award-winning Piano Jazz Radio Broadcasts and never-before-released performances from the Monterey Jazz Festival and great jazz venues. Listen to Chicago jazz, New Orleans Jazz, 1920s jazz, big bands, acid jazz, Latin jazz, and more.
American Music
This database, formerly known more descriptively as American Song, is a source for American roots music and pre-1960 American popular music. Included are recordings by artists such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Peggy Seeger, Si Kahn, Lead Belly, Sleepy LaBeef, the New Lost City Ramblers, Otis Clay, Eddy The Chief Clearwater, Nanci Griffith, The Lilly Brothers, Merle Travis, Ma Rainey, Mahalia Jackson, Alberta Hunter, Tampa Red, William Bunk Johnson, Duke Ellington, Sophie Tucker, Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, Sarah Vaughn, Cripple Clarence Lofton, Big Joe Williams, Memphis Jug Band, Roosevelt Sykes, Dizzy Gillespie, Chicago River Kings, Muddy Waters, Skip James, Blind Willie McTell, Lonnie Johnson, Alberta Jones, Johnny Shines, Memphis Minnie, Arthur Big Boy Crudup, Little Brother Montgomery, Speckled Red, Edith Wilson, Earl Hines, Eddie Johnson, Bobby Bradford, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and hundreds more.
Smithsonian Global Sound
An online streaming music database of the world's musical and aural traditions. The database includes 2,900+ albums, comprising over 42,000 tracks. The database includes the published recordings owned by the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of numerous influential labels and recording pioneers. Users may search with standard and advanced features or browse the collections by album, genre, instruments, labels, languages, people, ensembles, places or cultural groups.
Classical Performance in Video
Formerly known as Opera in Video, this database now has a much broader scope for the study of classical music. Users experience classical music through 1,600 performances in various genres, including 200 full operas and 75 dance titles, as well as masterclasses, documentaries, scores, and interviews.
Music Online: Popular Music Library from Alexander Street contains a wide range of popular music from around the world, including hundreds of thousands of tracks from major genres in pop music, including alternative, country, Christian, electronic, hip-hop, metal, punk, new age, R&B, reggae, rock, soundtracks and many more.
Music Online: Contemporary World Music delivers the sounds of all regions from every continent. The database will contain important genres such as reggae, worldbeat, neo-traditional, world fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing and jazz, and other genres such as traditional music - Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, gagaku, and more.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY:
Academic video online
Academic Video Online is a comprehensive video database available to libraries. It delivers over 70,000 titles spanning the widest range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more.
A STREAMING AUDIO DATABASE FROM ANOTHER PROVIDER:
DRAM - Database of Recorded American Music
DRAM is a not-for-profit resource providing educational communities with on-demand streaming access to CD-quality audio (192kbps Mp4), complete original liner notes and essays from independent record labels and sound archives. Continuing in the tradition of DRAM's sister company New World Records, one of DRAM's primary focuses is the preservation and dissemination of important recordings that have been neglected by the commercial marketplace, recordings that may otherwise become lost or forgotten. Currently DRAM's collection contains nearly 2,300 albums worth of recordings from a distinctive set of 15 independent labels, and we are continually working to add more content. The basis for the current collection is the diverse catalogue of American music recordings by New World Records.
PLEASE NOTE:
Of course services such as Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, and YouTube will have many of the same selections that our subscription services provide. However, they do not sell subscriptions to libraries. You must access them on your own.
Our subscription databases definitely provide content that is unavailable elsewhere. Also, on sites such as YouTube, content can come and go without warning. Although content sometimes changes on subscription databases, it is much less likely that anything a user is depending upon will disappear from them. This is an important consideration for professors assigning their students to listen to or watch videos of particular performances.