Higher Education by day, MLIS student by night

Dewey Music: search the Internet Archive’s audio

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Dewey Music is the interface of the Internet Archive’s fabulous music library. Grateful Dead fans may know the archive.org’s great collection of the band’s live shows throughout the ages, but there are many more vintage (and contemporary) goodies nestled inside the Archive’s library. Search Dewey Music to find old school live jams or newer music such as, shall we say, one of my favorite bands, Guster and artists like, Deb Talan, and Elliot Smith.

Dewey Music basically searches through this entire list from the Archive’s website. You can listen to, download, remix, and share anything you see on this site legally and for free, which is a bonus. Dewey Music allows you to create playlists, share the music with others via Facebook, and music you choose continues to play as you search. In addition to their general search, you can browse by genre, top rated, most played and newest uploads.

So far, I’ve found Dewey Music’s search features a lil’ buggy. Searches were dropped, I had to hit “go” twice in order for results to show, and the search engine didn’t produce recordings that I could find by directly using the Internet Archive’s audio search page. Despite this, Dewey Music offers a lot of promise, however, to unlocking the fabulous goodness of the Archive’s music library.

Tags: , , , , ,