True confessions of Carla: I am not a music person. I mean, I like music. I enjoy a few tunes in the background while I am working or running. I play the piano well enough to know I should never try to accompany or entertain anyone. But when it comes to truly appreciating music like so many people do, I am just not there.
So, if I can get really excited about our newest online resource, I can only imagine how most of you more cultured and musically inclined folks will feel. The Provo City Library now offers all Provo Library card holders access to Freegal!!
What is Freegal? Well, it’s a free music service. All you need is your Provo City Library card number and your PIN. With those two numbers you have downloadable or streaming access to more than 9 million songs, including Sony Music’s catalog of legendary artists. In total the collection is comprised of music from over 28,000 labels with music that originates in over 80 countries. There is no software to download, and there are no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.
Each day, Provo Library Card holders can stream 5 hours of music from the Freegal site and each week, they can download 3 songs. Those are three songs they can download and keep forever. No checkout periods, no due dates, no overdue fines.
In the last few weeks, since we’ve started promoting the service, over 1,800 songs have been streamed and 223 songs downloaded by excited library patrons. What are they finding? Well, popular genres so far include alternative, classical, holiday, and pop. And what songs are they downloading? Here is a short list of some popular tracks:
| ARTIST | SONG TITLE |
| Adele | Hello |
| Adele | I Miss You |
| Adele | Send My Love (To Your New Lover) |
| Rachel Platten | Fight Song |
| Pentatonix | Winter Wonderland/Don’t Worry Be Happy |
| David Archuleta | O Holy Night |
| Walk the Moon | Shut up and Dance |
We hope that many of our patrons discover and enjoy this great new service. Find it on our website with our other digital collections or download the free app for access on your mobile device. I have already downloaded a couple Air Supply songs (because they were on one of the 7 8-track cartridges that I owned in high school that would play in my awesome dinosaur of a car), a few Christmas songs (because you can never have too many versions of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”), and some of Adele’s new songs (because I aspire to be better informed about new music).