It’s a pretty straightforward question - do you know of any legal sites to download classical music? My mom was asking for one, because she wants to download some specific pieces and burn them to CD, and I can’t think of any offhand. Really, the only one I’m at all familiar with is iTunes, and even after poking around their website, I can’t tell if they have much of a classical selection.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, and please refrain from posting advice or links that would cause this thread to be locked. Thanks!
You could sign up for Listen.com’s Rhapsody service. Their classical selection ain’t half bad at all (though depending on your tastes you may find it lacking) and you can burn most (but not all) of the tracks to a CD.
E-Music, which is unlimited downloads for (I think) $15/month ($10 of you commit to a long-term deal) is a goldmine for classical music. For all genres, they have lots of cuts available, but usually with second-tier artists; since most classical listeners go for the composer over the performer (Every symphony by every major composer, but nothing performed by Yo Yo-Ma or anybody hugely famous), this is a great deal. When I was a member, I became a huge fan of the English Guitar Quartet and Liona Boyd, both well-represented there.
Classical Music Archives is an excellent site. You can get five free downloads every day, but it’s REALLY worth the 25 yearly fee for up to 1000 downloads per month. Their music selection is awesome and quite extensive.
For months I’d been frustrated that we don’t get iTunes here in Canada, so I was quite happy when I heard about AllOfMP3.com (click on “English” on the upper-left corner if you don’t understand Russian), which claims to be legal, according to Russian Laws.
There are a few levels of memberships, and I went for the $5 one a few weeks ago. I still haven’t used it all up. Basically, for most of the files, the cost is $0.01US per megabyte. So that comes up to about six cents per song on average, in 192kps quality (considered near-CD quality). So a $5 VIP subscription is for 500MB of downloads. That doesn’t even include streams/downloads of low-quality samples (which are full length but 24kps).
The quality for most of the files is excellent. I download all the files in 192kps when available and I have yet to find a file that skips.
Not to be snarky here, but why go to all that trouble of downloading? The Naxos label offers more selections than most download sites, some very talented performers, and at much cheaper prices than the major labels. And CD quality will almost always be better than MP3s. If it’s a “mix” CD your mother is after, she can still burn and rip from the CD originals.
:wally A real music snob pities Naxos’ poor variety of repertoire
Anyway, I’d been meaning on asking this exact question for some time, so I’ve been looking at the options provided so far. IMO, the only one with a respectable range is Emusic, and they give a generous free trial. (They are being fairly cheeky when they count 40-second movements as individual downloads, though.) Astonishingly, however, that site lacks an index of composers!
