Best Collection of Legally Downloadable Showtunes?

[durleste]

Posted: 3/8/04 at 10:19pm

Now that I've completed transferring my extant collection (garnered in my 49 years on this planet) of vinyl, cassettes and CDs to MP3 files on my computer and portable, I've been exploring the world of "legal" audio downloads to help me round out my collection. It could ultimately be cheaper than spending the hundreds od ollars needed to fulfill my Amazon wish-list.

I've explored Musicmatch Downloads, eMusic, MusicNow, iTunes and Napster. I've been fairly disappointed so far at what can be found int he way of cast recordings. Some of the services do have a number of classic and contemporary musicals available, but the pickings remain small. The biggest problem is that almost none of them classify the albums under their own genre. So you have to seach for albums by entering various combinations of "original cast," "cast recording," "original Broadway cast," "New Broadway Cast," et al. And you discover that the various albums are spread out under all sorts of different genres. There's just no rhyme or reason to it.

Some have deceptive or incorrect listings. MusicNow has several revival recordings listed as being "Original Cast" and giving dates from the original production (such as listing Kiss Me Kate (1947) Original Cast recording yet what's there is the 90s revival!-which you can tell from the cover art and by listening to the cuts.

So-
1. If anyone knows of a service that makes it easier to find and download cast albums, let me know.
2. If you subscribe to any of the services, write to them and complain about the abysmal lack of care and concern for this (admittedly small) market segment. If enough of us complain, perhaps they will take notice.

Adrian

Updated On: 3/8/04 at 10:19 PM