Streaming Music for Your School Library

I’ve finally found the perfect background music to enhance the atmosphere in my school library. Problem is, it’s an endangered species…

I have a few layers of reasons for wanting to share this topic with other librarians:

1) To tell you about something I think is pretty cool.

2) To check to see if you agree that it’s cool or, instead, maybe, think it’s a bit naughty.

3) To urge you, if you think it’s cool, to take action to help insure that it will be able to remain being cool.

Here’s what I’m talking about. I’ve been experimenting with various kinds of background music in my school library, well, basically since I’ve been a librarian.

I’ve done the NPR classical thing, the recorded ambient loop thing–everything you’d expect from a geek like me. Nothing really clicked, though.

Recently, I was trying to find a streaming webcast that was suitable to listen to in our facility. I was looking for something upbeat and urban this time around, but something predominately instrumental; something that would give the facility a coffee-house like vibe, without drawing attention to itself.

It took a couple days of sometimes painful trial and error–I almost gave up at one point–but I finally discovered an excellent service that offers an entire menu of super cool audio streams, SomaFM.

On a typical library day I stream Soma’s Groove Salad stream into the facility, and turn it up just loud enough to let the beats, grooves and samples dance atop the facility’s ambient air handling noise.

The sound reaches the casual reading areas of the library, but can’t really be heard in the areas where the focus in on research. Students seem to enjoy it and I certainly do. It’s simultaneously energizing, calming, interesting, and focusing.

I invite you try it out in your facility.

Here’s the problem, though. Just as I was thanking the audio gods for finally delivering this perfect, commercial free, music service into my facility, I became aware that SomaFM and all so-called “Internet Radio” sites are in danger of being shut down by a recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling that would charge small webcast operations per-performance royalty fees for the music they stream.

The fees, according to some sources, could add up to well over one million dollars per year–enough to shut down just about every commercial free streaming operation in existence.

What do you think about that?

I’m kinda pissed. For a bunch of reasons.

Now: I know I’m gonna hear opinions to the contrary because we librarians have traditionally been all about respecting intellectual property. I welcome those arguments. I want to hear them.

I would opine, though, that this isn’t about artistic property or artist’s profits–I think it’s about the Recording Industry Association of America and their obsessive need to control every penny of musical commerce.

What bums me about this impending situation is this question:

WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE ABOUT MONEY!!!

Can’t we let hobbyists and enthusiasts be free to do their thing, anymore?

Try this: Fire up your media player right now and dial up SomaFM and select Groove Salad. Enjoy the music for a few minutes and then ask yourself this key question:

“How much money in sales is being denied from the artists because of what Soma is playing right now?”

I defy anyone to not answer “NONE.”

For one thing, most of what they play you’re not going to run out and buy anyway, unless you happen to moonlight from your school librarian gig as an after-hours club DJ.

Secondly, the exposure they provide these artists, most of whom are pretty obscure, can only help them.

So who’s the villian here?

And who’s the extortionist?

In any case, digital rights issues continue to be an incredibly interesting unfolding story. I’d like to hear what you think.

To read more about the situation currently threatening Internet Radio, visit savethestreams.org

They’ll fill you in and hook you up with information you can use, if so inclined, to implore your elected representatives to put the brakes on the Copyright Royalty Board’s scheme.

Finally, I’d like to publicly pledge that, should SomaFM survive, and there’s any spare change left in the tin book-fine till come June, I’m mailing it all to them.