Solano Library offers free access to streaming music
The county library has partnered with Freegal Music to offer free (and legal) streaming music to cardholders.
(Photo courtesy Blue Coat Photos; Graphic by Solano NewsNet)
The Solano County Library is now offering its cardholders free access to millions of popular and fringe songs and music tracks through a new partnership with the music catalog service Freegal.
Starting today, anyone with a Solano County Library card can download the Freegal app and instantly start streaming more than 15 million tracks, including songs published by popular labels, including Sony Music and its subsidiaries Columbia Records, RCA Records and Epic Records. More than 40,000 music videos are also available to stream through the service.
The Freegal app is available for smartphones and tablets running Apple’s iOS (including iPhones and iPads) or Google’s Android operating system. Customers can also access Freegal using their desktop or laptop computers.
“We have been waiting a long time for a service like this that delivers great music, compatibility with lots of devices and simplicity of use,” Suzanne Olawski, the director of library services, said in a press release sent this week. “Freegal is kind of like Spotify or Apple Music where you can create playlists and stream music[, and] we think this will be incredibly popular with our library users.”
While Freegal does offer a robust selection of music, its catalog is eclipsed by the other commercial streaming services, with Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music each boasting a catalog that includes more than 70 million tracks.
There are a few other trade-offs with Freegal as well: Each library’s contract with the service is different, and the contract dictates whether customers can actually download tracks to their devices or merely stream them (or some combination of the two).
The contract with Solano Public Library allows cardholders to stream as much music as they want, while limiting track downloads to three per week. Download limitations reset every Sunday evening at 10 p.m., according to Freegal.
But cost is where Freegal really shines: Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music each cost $10 a month (some Verizon customers get Apple Music for free; Amazon offers a $2 a month discount on Amazon Music for customers with an Amazon Prime membership). Freegal, as the name would suggest, is free to access — and entirely legal.
Library cardholders who want to explore Freegal can log in through a special portal set up for the Solano County Library by clicking or tapping here. Residents who want to sign up for a library card can do so via the Solano County Library website.
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