Listen to complete Naxos classical CDs online

[Claude]

This is probably not that new, but I just dicovered that the Naxos homepage offers the possibility to listen online to complete CDs.

Most labels or online stores only have 30 second audio clips, which are almost useless especially with classical music, but Naxos has for every CD all the tracks available for online streaming. Browse or search their catalogue and select any album, all titles I've seen so far have audio available.

The sound is of course heavily compressed (20 kbit/s bitrate, 22kHz sample rate, stereo), so the audio quality is no better than AM radio, but that's enough to evaluate unfamiliar classical works. And Naxos has many of them, because it offers the biggest repertoire of all classical labels.

In order to listen to the streams you need Windows Media Player 7 or higher, and you need to register for free. The email address is not being verified, you can login immediately after creating an account. There are two types of streams available, for modem and broadband (20 kbit/s) users.

I just listened to the complete "Hamlet" film music by Shostakovich, which made me decide to buy the Naxos disc.

Edited June 5, 2004 by Claude

[ghost of miles]

Thanks for posting this, Claude. I have a few of the Naxos classical CDs and can say only good things about the series; I'll definitely be checking out the website from now on.

[B. Goren.]

This is probably not that new, but I just dicovered that the Naxos homepage offers the possibility to listen online to complete CDs.

I didnt know that. Thanks for posting Claude.

[alejo]

Yes, that is a great service and it has also influenced me to purchase a few CDs from their American Classics series.

[Rooster_Ties]

Yes, that is a great service and it has also influenced me to purchase a few CDs from their American Classics series.

IMHO, nearly 75% of their entire American Classics series is worth its weight in gold.

[medjuck]

I bought their release of Kurt Weil's "The Eternal Road" recently. The production of the music was paid for by "Milken Foundation for Jewish Music". Anyway the cd was cheap and the music was good. I've been on a Weil kick recently. Didn't RCA once release a recrod of Weil music by the Jazz Sextet of the USA or something like that? Mike Zwerin was involved if memory serves me well-- which it hardly ever does nowadays.

[alankin]

[...] I've been on a Weil kick recently.  Didn't RCA once release a recrod of Weil music by the Jazz Sextet of the USA or something like that?  Mike Zwerin was involved if memory serves me well-- which it hardly ever does nowadays.

You mean this one:

The Sextet of Orchestra U.S.A - Mack the Knife & Other Berlin Theatre songs of Kurt Weill (RCA)

And yeah, Zwerin was the leader. It was released in 1964. Eric Dolphy was one of the soloists!

(Koch reissued it in 2001, but it's now OOP.)

Edited June 6, 2004 by alankin

[Claude]

This free listening service was a bit too attractive

Newsletter No.84

June 16, 2004

FREE Streaming to end June 15

New Paid Service Available!

Naxos.com has become successful beyond our expectations.

Last month, we streamed 600,000 tracks to our subscribers free of charge.

This has placed a tremendous burden on our infrastructure and driven up

our bandwidth cost. Originally, we introduced the free track-by-track listening service to allow our customers to sample our recordings and help them decide which ones they like and want to purchase. These days, however, more and more people simply use Naxos.com as a Free listening site, which was never intended.

As a result , we see ourselves forced to limit streaming to only 25% of each track, which is still far more generous than any other classical website.

If subscribers wish to continue listening to complete tracks, they can do so by paying only US$19.95 / 19.95 per year, which is just enough to cover our infrastructure and bandwidth costs. Click here to subscribe!

Edited June 19, 2004 by Claude