Downloading Music Simply by Having a Library Card

 

Over the past few years or so, my local library offered patrons the option of streaming music and downloading music using a program called Freegal. Originally, patrons were allowed five downloads of songs per week; later the number of downloads was reduced to three songs per week. If some songs were too long, that is, longer than eight minutes, they were not included as downloadable. It took nearly a month to download a complete album. The downloaded music from Freegal consisted of a lower bitrate than the music downloaded from Bandcamp—256kbps as opposed to 350kbps. For me at least, there wasn’t a noticeable difference once the music was burned to a CD. My computer is old enough to still include a CD drive.

From what I hear, my local library will be ending its subscription to Freegal in January, so downloading music for free will no longer be an option for patrons at some point.

The best things I downloaded from Freegal are Jan Harbeck’s Balanced, Yuri Honing’s Bluebeard, and Matt Carmichael’s Marram. I have to admit that I feel guilty for not paying for this music. I can only hope that the musicians were compensated in some way by Freegal.