What is streaming music or video?
These products are streaming media rather than downloaded.  The user has to be connected to the internet in order to listen or view it.  The content is not saved to the PC’s hard drive. 

Links to the content of the Alexander Street Products

Theatre in Video with BBC content contains more than 250 of the world’s most important plays, together with more than 100 video documentaries, online in streaming video—more than 500 hours in all.

Classical Music Library is a fully searchable classical music resource—a comprehensive database of distinguished classical recordings. It includes tens of thousands of licensed recordings that users can listen to on the Internet.

American Song is a history database of 50,000 songs that users listen to over the Internet. It allows people to hear and feel the music from our past. Much more than a repository of well known classics like Yankee Doodle and The Star Spangled Banner, this new resource includes music that relates to almost every walk of American life, every ethnic group, and every time period. You’ll find songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers, and cowboys. There are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and anti-war protests. Hymns, funny songs, college songs, sea shanties, shape note songs, and about topics as diverse as New York and electricity.

Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries® is an encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions. The database includes more than 35,000 individual tracks of music, spoken word, and natural and human-made sounds.

African American Song includes 50,000 tracks of music consisting of jazz, blues, gospel, and other forms of African American music.

Contemporary World Music  contains 50,000 tracks that deliver the sounds of all regions from every continent.  The database contains important genres such as reggae, worldbeat, neo-traditional, world fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing and jazz, and other genres such as traditional music - Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, gagaku, and more.

Are these sites searchable?
On all the sites there is a basic search box at the top of each page.  Advanced searching is also available. The music sites offer browsing A-Z by artist, composer, instrument, language, instrument, genre, label, etc.  Users can also browse by category such as type of music: folk, jazz, chamber, orchestral, opera, etc.  The categories may be further refined using various pull down menus.  The theatre site offers browsing by categories.
Once a work is selected, the user can listen (or view) the entire work or individual portions or tracks.  To save a particular work, create a playlist.

Is Registration required?
Registration is not required for general use of the site (i.e. browsing, searching, or playing tracks).  Registering on the site enables the user to create, view, and share custom playlists. Each site requires its own registration. 

What are playlists?
Playlists are collections of tracks, albums, and even other playlists that are grouped together. Each site has theme playlists that have been developed by Alexander Street staff.  For example, there are over 30 playlists in the Classical Music Library including music that is covered in popular music reference books.
 
Users can create their own playlists, in addition to the many that are already available on the service. Any playlists created are saved in My Playlists. They can be accessed whenever the user logs into his or her personal account from any location.  A playlist created on a PC may be accessed from any PC with internet access.  Playlists are unique to each site.  The user will have to register at each site.

What about remote users who have Macintosh Computers or Netscape browsers?
Windows Media format is used for streaming files. Currently, Windows Media format is only available for PC users browsing the service with Internet Explorer version 5.5 or more recent. Because of the difficulties in streaming audio to users with Netscape browsers and Macintosh computers, music is streamed to these users in MP3 format. This is done using the Macromedia Flash player. The HELP section of each site has information on compatibility issues.

Purchasing Downloaded Music
Remote users will be able to purchase the download of certain tracks on home PC’s.  Downloading is not permitted on library PC’s. If a track can be purchased, the word “buy” appears next to the title of the track.  This is mostly seen in the Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries®. The cost varies from around $.60 cents to around $3.50 for longer tracks. On average, each track available for download is around $1.00.  THERE IS NO CHARGE TO LISTEN TO THE STREAMING MUSIC OR VIEW THE STREAMING VIDEO.