LibGuides: Music: Streaming audio and video

Subscription audio and video (requires Brown authentication)

Brown subscribes to several large databases of streaming music. From off-campus, you will need to authenticate in order to use these databases.

Berliner Philharmoniker: Digital Concert Hall This link opens in a new window
Access includes all live concerts, concert videos, films, and interviews. Users must register for an account during the trial period.
Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new window
A classical music streaming platform, current.
Current; Naxos Music Library is a unique resource of classical music online. It includes the complete Naxos, Marco Polo, and Dacapo catalogues of over 85,000 tracks, including classical music, jazz, world, folk and Chinese music. Users can access and play the entire catalogue of Naxos recordings, selecting works, for example, by composer, artist, period, year of composition, solo instrument or genre. Playlists can easily be created for educational use and hours of continuous enjoyment. Includes notes on the works being played as well as biographical information on composers or artists.
This database has conflicts with Firefox on Mac computers. We recommend you use Safari or Chrome instead.
Naxos Music Library Jazz This link opens in a new window
A collection of jazz music offering more than 230,000 tracks by more than 32,000 artists and 500 labels, from jazz legends to contemporary jazz.
Naxos Music Library Jazz is one of the most comprehensive collection of jazz music available online. It offers close to 20,000* tracks of jazz from over 1,900* albums. Over 500* jazz artists are represented. Naxos Music Library Jazz comprises Naxos Jazz and the 22 labels of Fantasy Jazz. Naxos Jazz, along with Prophone and Proprius, brings you the world of international jazz, covering Sweden and Scandinavian jazz artists. US-based Fantasy Jazz has the world's deepest jazz catalogue and offers the very best in blues and R&B.
Music Online: Listening This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary collection of audiovisual content from more than 500 music producers and distributors around the world.
Music Online: Listening brings together on a single cross-searchable platform the entire suite of Alexander Street Press music products to which the Brown University Library subscribes. Databases include:
- American Music
- Classical Music Library
- Contemporary World Music
- Jazz Music Library
- Popular Music Library
- Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries
Qwest TV This link opens in a new window
A subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service featuring jazz and related eclectic music
Qwest TV was created by Quincy Jones and is a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service featuring jazz and related eclectic music.

Smithsonian Global Sound
Smithsonian Global Sound, produced in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is a virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions. The collection provides educators, students, and interested listeners with an unprecedented variety of online resources that support the creation, continuity, and preservation of diverse musical forms. This resource may be cross-searched, along with other music resources, via Music Online.

Met Opera On Demand - Student Access This link opens in a new window
Stream more than 700 full-length opera performances by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City; also includes interviews with performers and creators as available.
Contains 500+ streaming videos of operas performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Includes interviews with performers and creators as available. For assistance, try the User Guide. This database has conflicts with Firefox on Mac computers. We recommend you use Safari or Chrome.
Medici.TV This link opens in a new window
Features a large on-demand library of recorded music, opera, and ballet performance videos, as well as broadcasts of live events from performance venues around the world.
Each year you can discover more than 100 events broadcast live from the most prestigious venues: Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Concertgebouw, Teatro alla Scala, Berliner Philharmonie, Salle Pleyel, Thtre des Champs-lyses, Verbier Festival, Salzburger Festspiele and more. You can also access the largest online collection of classical music videos
in the world, with 1,500 original programmes available on demand and with unlimited access, plus hundreds of new films each year.

Medici.tv individual account directions
Please see this slideshow for instructions on how to create an individualized account within Brown's medici.tv subscription.
Classical Music in Video
Classical Music in Video is an online collection for the study of classical music in video format. At completion it will contain 1,000 hours of classical music performances and masterclasses captured on video—approximately 1,500 performances in all. The collection will contain performances of all forms of classical music, including major orchestral performances by leading orchestras, plus chamber music, oratorio, and solo performances, along with masterclasses and interviews with master teachers from around the world.

Digital Theatre Plus This link opens in a new window
Access high-definition video of British theatrical productions, along with production information, interviews with key contributors, and teaching materials, current.
Digital Theatre Plus features high-definition live video captures of British theatrical productions, along with production information, interviews with key creative players, and teaching materials. Digital Theatre works in partnership with leading theater companies, education organizations and arts collectives in the UK to make the best theater, English, and drama resources widely available.

Ethnographic Videos Online
Intended to be a visual encyclopedia of human behavior and culture, online in streaming video. Contains classic and contemporary documentaries; previously unpublished footage from working anthropologists and ethnographers in the field; and select feature films. International in scope and thematic areas include: language and culture, kinesthetics, body language, food and foraging, cooking, economic systems, social stratification and status, caste systems and slavery, male and female roles, kinship and families, political organization, conflict and conflict resolution, religion and magic, music and the arts, culture and personality, and sex, gender, and family roles.

Dram Online This link opens in a new window
A scholarly resource of recordings, including liner notes and essays from New World, Composers Recordings, and other important labels, 1975-present.
1975-present; currently DRAM's collection contains more than 3,000 albums worth of recordings from a distinctive set of 26 independent labels. The basis for the current collection is the diverse catalogue of American music recordings by New World Records. The collection includes folk to opera, Native American to jazz, 19th century classical to early rock, musical theater, contemporary, electronic and more.

Selected non-subscription streaming audio

Brown University Library: The James Koetting Ghana Field Recording Collection
The complete archive of James Koetting's field recordings from the 1970s--142 tapes in all--has been digitized and can be heard here.
British Library: Sounds
A selection of digitized recordings from the British Library's collections; includes world music, popular music, classical music, oral histories, sound recording history, and more. NOTE: some recordings are only playable within the EU; check "Only recordings everyone can play" in the search box if you are located elsewhere.
The National Jukebox
The National Jukebox is a project to digitize a part of the Library of Congress's holdings in early sound recordings. From their website: "the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Jukebox content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels, including Columbia, OKeh, and others."
The Internet Archive: Audio Archive
The audio archives at the Internet Archive include the recordings of many contemporary composers as well as popular songs digitized from early 20th century 78 RPM records.
Awesome Tapes from Africa
This is music you won't easily find anywhere else—except, perhaps in its region of origin.
FolkStreams
"A National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Cultures streamed with essays about the traditions and filmmaking. The site includes transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites."
Association for Cultural Equity (Alan Lomax recordings)
The Sound Recordings catalog comprises over 17,400 digital audio (and video) files, beginning with Lomax’s first recordings onto (newly invented) tape in 1946 and tracing his career into the 1990s. These materials stem from Lomax's independent sound archive (his earlier recordings for the Library of Congress are the purview of the American Folklife Center).
UC Santa Barbara Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
"The UCSB Library, with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Grammy Foundation and donors, has created a digital collection of more than 10,000 cylinder recordings held by the Department of Special Collections. To bring these recordings to a wider audience, the Library makes them available to download or stream online for free. "
The Global Jukebox
From the About page: "The Global Jukebox is presented as a free, non-commercial, educational place...to explore expressive patterns in...cultural-geographic and diasporic settings and alongside other people’s. By inviting familiarity with many kinds of vocalizing, musicking, moving, and talking, we hope to advance cultural equity and to reconnect people and communities with their creative heritage....The Global Jukebox makes available to the general public, scholars and scientists all of the data and many of the analyses of the research into the expressive arts carried out under the direction of Alan Lomax and the anthropologist Conrad Arensberg from 1960 to 1995 at Columbia University and Hunter College/CUNY."
OperaVision
OperaVision is a free streaming platform for opera, sponsored by the European Union. Performances are livestreamed and then available on-demand for several months afterward.

Sound effects

FreeSound
FreeSound is a database of browsable, downloadable sounds under a Creative Commons License.
Partners in Rhyme
Royalty-free sound effects.
Macaulay Library from the Cornell Lab of Orinthology
The world's largest archive of wildlife sounds.
http://macaulaylibrary.org/terms-of-use
BBC Sound Effects
16,000 BBC Sound Effects are made available by the BBC in WAV format to download for personal, educational or research purposes. (Commercial uses require a license.)
Sound Bible--Royalty Free Sounds
SoundBible.com offers free sound clips for download in either wav or mp3 format. The clips on the linked page are royalty-free (please note that clips elsewhere on the site may not be royalty-free).