There's Music in the Air (and Online)!: Naxos Music Library and Jazz Library Now Available

The Cheng Library is pleased to announce that we are now offering TWO new databases providing music online through streaming audio technology:

The Naxos Music Library is a large online classical music library. It offers streaming audio access to over 100,000 albums and features over 1.4 million tracks covering both standard and rare repertoire. Over 800 new albums are added to the library every month. The database offers the complete Naxos and Marco Polo catalogues plus the complete catalogues or selected titles from over 650 record labels. Along with classical music, a modest selection of jazz, world, and pop/rock are also represented. The Naxos Music Library can be accessed from any computer, anywhere, anytime. With the iPhone/iPod and Android mobile apps, subscribers can also access the service on the go, and the HTLM5 player can stream music though the standard internet connection of the most phones and tablets. The contents of the library can be searched by composer, work, genre and label; by keyword search; and by a sophisticated advanced search engine with up to 11 combined search criteria. In addition to the audio, Naxos Music Library provides liner notes for many recordings. Listeners can create personalized playlists or use predefined Naxos Music Library playlists.

Naxos Music Library Jazz is one of the most comprehensive collections of jazz music available online. Naxos Music Library Jazz comprises Naxos Jazz, the catalogue of Blue Note Records, and the 22 labels of Fantasy Jazz along with Prophone and Proprius. It currently offers over 100,000 tracks of jazz from 260 labels, and over 12,000 jazz artists are represented. U.S.-based Fantasy has the world's deepest jazz catalogue and offers the very best in blues and R&B. Blue Note offers albums featuring the legendary artist John Coltrane and iconic artists such as Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter and many others. Through a sophisticated online search engine, users can locate works by featured artist(s), disc, song title and catalogue number. Playlists can also be easily created for educational use, or for hours of continuous enjoyment. New jazz releases are continually added to ensure that the music library is always up-to-date.

Both Naxos Music Library and Naxos Music Library Jazz are excellent tools for musical education. They give faculty the opportunity to plan course work and assignments around much wider collections of material than are usually available in libraries, with the option to create customized playlists. Students will have access to the playlist recordings, on or off campus. Multiple users can listen to the same or different tracks at the same time. In the classroom, teachers can choose from a great selection of music to play without having to find or purchase CDs.

Both databases enable users to create static URLs linking to individual albums, playlists, repertoire, and tracks.

The audio in both databases is streamed through the web site. Adobe Flash is the default player, and recent versions of any major web browser software that meets the requirements for Adobe Flash should work fine. The music is streamed in Flash AAC format, and the standard sound quality produces near-CD quality audio.

Naxos offers brief overview videos that will introduce you to the content and features of each database, so try the overview video for Naxos Music Library and Naxos Music Library Jazz for a quick and easy orientation.

We invite you to try Naxos Music Library and Naxos Music Library Jazz. Please contact Richard Kearney (kearneyr@wpunj.edu or 973-720-2165) in you have any questions or need any additional information or assistance.