Free Beethoven

[mmcirvin]

The BBC Philharmonic is going to be performing all of Beethoven's symphonies for radio this summer, and will be offering them for free download for limited times. In a break with the BBC website's general fascination with RealNetworks, they'll be MP3s.

I have a BBC Philharmonic record of Shostakovich's film music. They're good. I already have the nine symphonies from Sam's box set, performed by some outfit called the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, but it would be interesting to have another set of performances.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...BBC Radio 3 is also having a six-day Beethoven orgy in which they play his complete works, if you can get Radio 3...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I guess you can stream it from there if you can bear to put RealNetworks software on your machine.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...OK, I finally gave in, so I can now play media files that are only offered in RealMedia or Windows Media (Country AND Western).

And it appears that RealNetworks has cleaned up its act to some degree; the thing isn't totally stupid and malevolent any more. I have to give them a little credit...

Marry a windows user, if you haven't already

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Or Real Alternative (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm) for windows users (I haven't tried it, but I've heard good things).

Also for windows users, in case you happen to be married to one, is the useful Net Transport (http://www.xi-soft.com/default.htm) which can pull the real-audio file for conversion (hard to come by for free) or later listening (always free). This I have used, and while the interface could use some polish, the shareware is fully-featured (nagware) and it gets the jorb done faster than streaming.

It's trickier to use with some BBC stations than others-- BBC7, for example, has open links, either via the Listen Live player ("click here to open this in stand-alone player") or using the "Listen Again" pages. It downloads the .ram, looks inside, and automatically starts pulling the .ra, which is all that meaty audio goodness. Excellent for pulling the current stuff at 7, like Dr. Who, Journey into Space, and On the Town with the League of Gentlement.

You have to go the standalone-player route for Radio4, and for others, like the music stations, you just want to use their radio player and listen to the stream.