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BBC Offers Beethoven Symphonies for Download 420

Posted by Zonk from the git-yer-free-music-here dept.
Simon80 writes "BBC Radio 3 is making performances by the BBC Philharmonic of Beethoven's 6th to 9th symphonies available for free download for the next few days only, as the second part of a trial to 'test listeners appetite for downloads'. During the first part, the first 5 symphonies were offered, and over 650,000 people downloaded them."
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BBC Offers Beethoven Symphonies for Download More

BBC Offers Beethoven Symphonies for Download

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  • Earlier Performances? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Josuah ( 26407 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @04:46AM (#12972799) Homepage
    So, where can I get the earlier performances? I assume someone might have them available for download somewhere. Thanks. :)

  • I've always wondered why there isn't more of this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nurhussein ( 864532 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @04:48AM (#12972801) Homepage
    Free classical music downloads. Sure, the recording of the performance is still copyrighted, but aren't there any "free classical performers" out there?

    • Re:I've always wondered why there isn't more of th (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jack Taylor ( 829836 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @04:56AM (#12972818)
      The best musicians are usually too busy trying to scrape a living to play in a recording for free. Even if some musicians are willing to play for nothing, there are many other costs involved. You have to hire the music, which includes a fee payable to the estate of the composer in most cases. You have to hire a recording venue with a nice acoustic. And you have to pay someone who knows what they're doing to record it. I'm sure there are lots of classical recordings that don't recoup even these costs...

      • "You have to hire the music, which includes a fee payable to the estate of the composer in most cases. "

        Given that most classical music was written by composers who have been dead for much longer than 90 years, there is no fee payable to the estate of the composer in most cases because the copyright of the composer has expired. Copyright should expire after a fixed period of time according to the US Constitution:

        [Copyright is] "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limi

      • I don't mean to disrespect them in any way, nor am I complaining that they are overpaid; however, the starting salary for a 1st violinist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is over $100,000. There are far too many great musicians who are indeed trying to scrape a meager living, but members of prominent orchestras are not such people. Of course, as you said there are more costs than that to an recording, and it is of little surprise that there are not more distributed for free.

        • Not easy to be 1st Chair Violinist... (Score:5, Informative)

          by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @11:54AM (#12973856) Homepage Journal
          The 1st Chair Violinist has a great deal of responsibility over and above being a hot violin soloist. S/He is usually the assistant conductor of the orchestra. S/He is the person who puts the orchestra through its rehearsals. S/He makes sure everyone has the right sheet music. S/He is basically the "second-in-command" of the orchestra.

          All that, and they have to be a hot violin soloist too. It's really quite a set of responsibilities. No shit they get paid well.

          Unfortunately the percussionists in the orchestra are the ones at the bottom of the totem pole. This was a fact of life that was quite depressing for my husband, who's a percussionist and was a member of the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble in the early part of the 1970s. Instead of classical, he took his chances on rock. ;-)

          • Re:Not easy to be 1st Chair Violinist... (Score:5, Informative)

            by HuguesT ( 84078 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @03:33PM (#12974754)
            The parent didn't say first chair violonist, he said first violonist, i.e. any of the 20-30 or so violonists who play the first violin part in any orchestral work.

            Rest assured that the first chair violonist from one of the major orchestra in the world makes a whole lot more than this, and this is just the salary. Then there are guest works here and there, lessons, whatever.

            from this link [violinist.com]


            Actually, the salary in major orchestras is quite high. The starting salary in San Francisco for example is $99,000 a year. In most of the major symphony orchestra, the starting salary is between about 90,000-95,000 to I think 115,000 for the Metropolitan Orchestra. The salary info is available through AFM, possibly even on their website. These salaries are for section jobs.

    • Re:I've always wondered why there isn't more of th (Score:5, Informative)

      by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @04:58AM (#12972822) Homepage
      aren't there any "free classical performers" out there?

      Yes. The problem is, they're not very good. Unlike popular music, where someone can start to learn guitar and become a world-famous "musician" a few years later (in some cases, this order is reversed), a good quality symphony orchestra contains 50 or more musicians, rarely with less than fifteen years of experience.

      As a general rule, if you're a professional classical musician, you can't afford to give away your work for free -- not to mention the costs of renting a recording studio which can fit an entire symphony orchestra. If you're an amateur classical musician (defined as "has a full time job which isn't music"), then unless you're really exceptional, you're not good enough to make recordings which people will want to listen to.

      • Re:I've always wondered why there isn't more of th (Score:5, Informative)

        by phr1 ( 211689 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @05:40AM (#12972910)
        See for example Magnatune [magnatune.com], which has tons of good classical recordings including some from world renowned performers, all under Creative Commons licenses. Granted they are mostly solo and small chamber performances, rather than full scale orchestral works. However, there are certainly professional classical performers willing and able to release stuff under CC. Note also that the BBC downloads are just a 7-day license and you're not allowed to share the files after downloading. It's not much better than a one-time radio broadcast that you can tape off the air.

      • Re:I've always wondered why there isn't more of th (Score:4, Interesting)

        by FeatureBug ( 158235 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @05:46AM (#12972928)
        I think you're missing something. There are many equally brilliant classical musicians who are not professional performers. Some live too far away from major cities which are the only places you have any chance of finding a job in performing classical music. Some give up because rates of pay for classical artists in many places is not high.

        The main reason for all of this: supply of classical musicians vastly exceeds demand. On the supply side, music schools, universities and conservatories worldwide are graduating thousands of performers of classical music every year. On the demand side, you can count the number of classical music professional orchestras in most countries in the low single digits; the reality is that the market for classical music concerts is much smaller than the market for popular music concerts.

        However, what this means for the future of open-licensed freely downloadable recordings of classical music is less clear. There is no shortage of brilliant musicians already employed full-time in other paying jobs like music teaching who might consider getting together with others to perform classical works under some sort of open licence, like one of the Creative Commons licences [creativecommons.org]. I suspect that as more people become aware of the open-licensing phenomenon in other media, more classical music performers will help create a similar bandwagon for classical music recordings.

    • Sure, the recording of the performance is still copyrighted, but aren't there any "free classical performers" out there?

      Is this true? I thought copyright was only awarded to ORIGINAL work not performances of such works?

      This article [wikipedia.org] at wikipedia states that for one to claim Copyright over a work three basic criteria have to be satifisied: skill, originality and work.

      While skill and work criteria are certainly satifisied, originality is not. I'm no legal expert but I expect that one can't claim copyri


    • > Free classical music downloads.

      Just think: our favorite pop hits might be available 200 years from now, too.

    • Free classical music downloads. Sure, the recording of the performance is still copyrighted, but aren't there any "free classical performers" out there?

      It probably takes a bit more coordination than the average popular music performer to make a good classical recording -- at least one that requires any significantly sized orchestra. (Conductors, venues, recording equipment, lots of performers, practicing performing together cohesively, etc etc.) I suspect that most orchestras able to pull it off

  • Luckily, they have not yet been /.ed, so I'm downloading now.

    Does anyone have links to the first 5 (if it is even still legal to download them from anywhere)?

    Anyway, this sort of thing is very cool. I have not listened to much Beethoven (aside from bits and peices in movies and such), so something like this is an excellent opportunity. If anyone knows any places to legally download performances of other classics, please post them.

    I love getting free, good music from the internet. The Internet Achive's [archive.org] Audio section is my very good friend, as is LegalTorrents [legaltorrents.com]. Granted, that is completely different music from this, but still it is awesome to be able to enjoy music being made by people who love making music more than making money.

    • Re:That is AWESOME! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by aurb ( 674003 )
      Don't forget scene.org [scene.org].

    • Re:That is AWESOME! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jazzman251 ( 887873 )
      I have not listened to much Beethoven (aside from bits and peices in movies and such), so something like this is an excellent opportunity.
      Why? is it really too hard to spend money on music? or is a 5 dollar bargain cd of weiner philharmoniker too pricey

      If anyone knows any places to legally download performances of other classics, please post them.
      http://www.itunes.com/ [itunes.com]
    • it's a bit weird to hear the announcer introducing the piece.
      At first I was going to complain about that, but then I thought it was kind of neat, to get a bit of background info about the pieces
      Not too sure about the stuff about how and when to download it, though.. They could've scrapped the talk about the downloading stuff, just put that in the datapath (or whatever it is called) of the mp3, so you can read instead of having to listen to that.

      Overall, nice shot.

    • Re:That is AWESOME! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nate4D ( 813246 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @10:05AM (#12973435) Homepage Journal
      I love getting free, good music from the internet. The Internet Achive's Audio section is my very good friend, as is LegalTorrents. Granted, that is completely different music from this, but still it is awesome to be able to enjoy music being made by people who love making music more than making money.

      As a semi-pro musician, I get really, really tired of seeing other geeks bash musicians who charge for their work.

      Certainly, there are performers who do it for nothing but the money - but coincidentally enough, they usually suck royally as musicians.

      A large number of musicians charge for what they do because they like to do it, and if enough people are willing to pay them for their music, they can quit their day job, and spend more time creating the art that they love to do.

      What's so bad about that?

      • Re:That is AWESOME! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03, 2005 @11:51AM (#12973840)
        Mind the audience you're preaching to... A lot of us here write open source software that can be used freely (as in both beer and speech), so we can't see anything wrong with musicians also creating performances that can be listened to freely (at least as in beer if not speech).

  • Test Results (Score:5, Funny)

    by PopeAlien ( 164869 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @04:54AM (#12972814) Homepage Journal
    TEST #1: Appetite for free downloads
    - status: complete
    result: people like free downloads.

    TEST #2: Ongoing Appetite for free downloads
    - status: incomplete
    result: pending...

    I just cant wait to see what the results are!!

  • A warning to audiophiles (Score:4, Informative)

    by Frodo Crockett ( 861942 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @04:56AM (#12972819)
    The mp3s are CBR 128kbps. Ugh. When will people learn to use ABR instead of CBR? You wind up with fractionally larger files that sound MUCH better!

    • Another warning to audiophiles (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If the cable conecting you to your ISP isn't thick enough and does not have gold plated connectors it will sound even worse!

  • Typical (Score:5, Funny)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Sunday July 03, 2005 @04:57AM (#12972821) Homepage Journal
    Goddamn communist atheists at the BBC, sharing stuff. Don't they realise that if any of us stop grasping what is ours, society will collapse. You didn't see Jesus Christ preaching about sharing, did you.

    Love,
    The Republican Party
  • Test users' appetite for downloads?? Why don't they just ask Apple or an Apple shareholder? Better yet, put the old Hitchhikers Guide or Dr. Who episodes online and they'll find out right quick about appetites for downloads!

  • This is good but should go farther (Score:5, Insightful)

    by file-exists-p ( 681756 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @05:10AM (#12972848)

    I always thought that most countries should those days invest a non-negligeable part of their cultur budget to set up huge on-line databases. I am amazed to see the cost to maintain dusty municipal libraries while I have still no way to get all those music and novels which are in the public domain.

    It is still the same tune: when will people in charge realize the power of digital information. One book in a library can be read by one person at one time. It gets wear out, it can be stolen. A book in a library can be read by what ? at most 50 person a year ? How much does it cost to be stored handled, fixed ? That's ridiculous. And municipal libraries should be the place to find computer to access those database if you do not own one.

    Also, for that BBC initiative, I read:

    Download disclaimer:

    The BBC grants you a 7-day, non-exclusive licence to download this Beethoven Experience audio.

    You may not copy, reproduce, edit, adapt, alter, republish, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use this audio in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use.

    So I can't give that piece of culture to my grand'ma and my little nephew ? That sucks.

    --
    Go Debian!
    • You may not copy, reproduce, edit, adapt, alter, republish, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use this audio in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use.

      So I can't give that piece of culture to my grand'ma and my little nephew ? That sucks.

      That's pretty standard stuff. You can find very similar disclaimers on CD and cassettes. The point is that you can only *give* it to granny (that is, hand over the CD and part with it yourself).

      Of course, nobody's do
    • That depends. The usual excemptions to copyright still apply, what is sometimes called unregulated or fair use - especially since there is no copy protection to circumvent. Here in Germany, for instance, I think I'd still have the right to create a private copy and distribute it to friends and family. At least until EUCD2 comes around.
    • You may not copy, reproduce, edit, adapt, alter, republish, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use this audio in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use.

      hmm - wonders... does transmit include streaming it from my powerbook to my stereo via AirportExpress?

  • Is Moonlight Sonata, one of my favorite classical tunes, part of symphonies or is that separate?

  • They will soon be sued... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ratta ( 760424 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @05:25AM (#12972881)
    as they are breaking Beethoven's copyright.

  • Aside: Heritage of CDs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tezza ( 539307 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @06:03AM (#12972963)
    The rumour has it [snopes2.com] that Beethovens Ninth was a factor for the 74 minute length of a CD. It's a nice theory.

    I think a better factor was that the disc diameter had to be able to fit within 5 1/4 inch disc drive bays, and then that manufacturing technology at the time only permitted a certain spiral density.

    Still having a musical heuristic to validate its use as a musical storage format is a good idea.

    • Re:Aside: Heritage of CDs (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree.davidglover@org> on Sunday July 03, 2005 @08:16AM (#12973176) Homepage

      In fact the length of an audio CD is related to the length of a video tape.

      The sampling rate of 44.1 kHz is inherited from a method of converting digital audio into an analog video signal for storage on video tape, which was the most affordable way to store it at the time the CD specification was being developed. A device that turns an analog audio signal into PCM audio, which in turn is changed into an analog video signal is called a PCM adaptor. This technology could store 6 samples (3 samples per each stereo channel) in a single horizontal line. A standard NTSC video signal has 245 usable lines per field, and 59.94 fields a second, which works out at 44,056 samples/second. Similarly PAL has 294 lines and 50 fields, which gives 44,100 samples/second. This system could either store 14-bit samples with some error correction, or 16-bit samples with almost no error correction. There was a long debate over whether to use 14 or 16 bit samples and/or 44.056 k or 44.1 k samples/s when the Sony/Philips taskforce designed the compact disc; 16 bits and 44.1 k samples/s prevailed. The Sony PCM-1610 and PCM-1630 are well-known examples of PCM-adaptors used in conjunction with the Sony U-Matic VCR.

      From [wikipedia.org]

  • Maybe we should make all those filthy foreigners pay the license fee as well! What what?
  • Well I got the first one, but midway through the second download, it has slowed down to a crawl.

    Wouldn't this be a perfect use of BitTorrents? Is there some good reason why they are not using BitTorrents or are they just unaware of the technology?

  • TRACKERLESS torrent (Score:2, Interesting)

    by talornin ( 745646 )
    Went ahead and made a _trackerless_ torrent for those of you who want all the symphonies in this BBC series.

    Grab the torrent here: http://home.no.net/nexus/beethoven_symphonies_trac kerless.torrent [no.net]

    Now, this is my first atempt at a trackerless torrent and you will need a client with trackerless support to use it (Newest Azureus and BitComet comes to mind)
  • I'm listening to the sixth now. Sounds pretty good so far. However, why did the BBC have to mar it by a talking bit at the start. Not complaining too much, it is a free download, but still, it will be distracting in my music library to have that hear it every time I play the song if I decide to keep it.

  • Prefixed natter (Score:3)

    by baadger ( 764884 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @07:06AM (#12973100)
    It's a shame theres so much bloody blabbering pre-fixing the actual music though. They seem to be recorded straight off air.

    Still, cynics aside it's still jolly nice of the BBC :)

  • The record companies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Sunday July 03, 2005 @10:47AM (#12973585) Journal
    It's interesting - although the BBC has the FULL RIGHTS to distribute this music as they see fit (including free), the record companies were STILL whining about it, and going on about "how it would destroy the record industry" etc. The record companies were on the BBC news at least twice whining about this.

    This proves the truth - record companies just don't like competition.

  • Good Recordings! (Score:3, Informative)

    by FriedTurkey ( 761642 ) * on Sunday July 03, 2005 @12:03PM (#12973906)
    Only problem is the 2 minutes of talking before the music.

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