As I write today's post, I am listening to opening tracks of an album called Bigger Bach Set. It has more than 14 hours of Bach, it has 293 tracks, and it set me back 99 cents.
It's put out by an outfit called the Bach Guild, a venerable record label which has been putting out reissues of its back catalog. If you wanted to build up a big collection cheaply of the music that RAW loved, buying the Bach Guild's stuff would be the way to go, and the outfit currently has a big sale on Amazon.
As RAW seemed to prefer Beethoven over any other composers (I do, too) the 99-cent Big Beethoven Box is as good a way as any to explain these compilations. It has four symphonies (#3, #5, #6, #7), a bunch of piano sonatas, five cello sonatas, "Egmont" incidental music, several late string quartets, The Creatures of Prometheus (e.g., ballet music) and a bunch of other stuff. All of these collections seem to be similar compilations of well known and more obscure pieces.
Sometimes these big box sets of MP3 sets are as much as $9 or so, but currently a bunch are on sale. Among the ones I own that currently are 99 cents apiece are the Big Beethoven Box, the Big Mozart Box, the Big Mahler Box, the Big Baroque Box, the Big Bach Set, the Bigger Bach Set and the Big Christmas Box.
One nice feature of these MP3 sets is that when you buy one from Amazon, the album automatically goes into the site's cloud player. I haven't bothered to download much of my music yet -- I just stream it
Probably for reasons involving copyright, the Bach Guild doesn't offer these amazing bargains for more modern composers; I assume I'll never get my Big Shostakovich Box, my Big Prokofiev Box or my Big Stravinsky Box. But for older composers, these are cheap ways to obtain lots of music.
I should not that I'm not an Amazon Associates member; I don't have any financial incentive to get anyone to buy anything there. I'm just talking. I do allow advertising at this site, although I've yet to receive a check from Google.
6 comments:
Not long ago I was reading in the abysmal copyright law stuff that happened under corporate Congress in the 1990s. Here's a good article:
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Professors-Fight-Over/127700/
Those are great deals. Wish I could listen to mp3s.
Oz, why can you not listen to mp3s?
Tom, I agree about newer composers too. I'd love to see a Leo Brouwer Box or a Stephan Rak Box. But alas...
They sound too flat to me. I miss the depth. mp3s have at least 35% less information than wav files ie normal cds.
I didn't realize it was that much (never bothered to learn, really.) I have noticed that I'm often wanting to bump the volume or tweak the EQ or _something_ but giving up and then forgetting about it... until it happens again. Was fond to blame it on the devices I use, or worse, my aging hearing. Perhaps it's all 3 then...
Thanks, Oz. I always learn a little something from your posts.
Michael: That's a great link. I'll post about it at my music blog. I've gotten really interested in copyright issues; I recently read Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture."
Oz: My ears as not as discerning as yours, but in recent years MP3 files have become "fatter" with larger bit rates. To me, they seem less tinny and harder to tell apart from CDs. That said, I wish the Bach Guild (and Amazon) offered FLAC files as an alternative.
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