Innovations of Music in Public Libraries
The Yahara Music Library at Madison Public Library
(Hiser, 2014b)
The Yahara Music Library is a collection of local musicians’ albums that patrons within the Madison Public Library are able to download. The music is available to listen to and is theirs to keep permanently. Library patrons are also allowed to download and stream an album in the collection as many times as they would like without the restricitions that other programs have; such as a maximum number of songs that can be downloaded per week, the number of patrons that can access the music, or a DRM that only allows access for a certain period of time (Hiser, 2014a).
To make this program possible the library banded together with an online record store called Murfie Music to get local artists music online for patrons of the library to download. Local artists are paid $200 per album to have it featured on the Yahara Music Library’s website. The website includes artists’ photos, biographies, links to their social media, and a list of upcoming gigs to help local artists spread the word about their music. This program allows local artists to get publicity and share their music with locals that will hopefully in turn create a following of the band and help support the community. Local musicians find this appealing in an effort to broaden their audience (Hiser, 2014a).
To make this program possible the library banded together with an online record store called Murfie Music to get local artists music online for patrons of the library to download. Local artists are paid $200 per album to have it featured on the Yahara Music Library’s website. The website includes artists’ photos, biographies, links to their social media, and a list of upcoming gigs to help local artists spread the word about their music. This program allows local artists to get publicity and share their music with locals that will hopefully in turn create a following of the band and help support the community. Local musicians find this appealing in an effort to broaden their audience (Hiser, 2014a).
(Hiser, 2014b)
The Yahara Music Library was modeled from the Iowa City Local Music Project and based their licensing agreement with the artists from their model. The licensing agreement allows the library to offer an album for a certain period of time, and the artist receives a one-time fee for the album. The artist must have permission to use the copyright, or own the copyright, in order for the song to be included in the library collection and to avoid any royalty issues. Yahara Music Library then worked with Murfie to create the software to meet the needs of this type of project and to create MARC records for the catalog. The system created by Murfie to run the Yahara Music Project “is modular: interface text is managed in github; a version of the Murfie.com platform that handles media upload, conversion, downloads, and streaming; metadata lives in Redis, an open-source data store; and a front-end JavaScript application gathers and displays album and artist data at YaharaMusic.org (Hiser, 2014b).” The system is available for others to use since it uses an open source, so other libraries can use the code in order to create their own project (Worland, 2014).
The program that runs the Yahara Music Project is continually being developed by library staff, and staff at Murfie, through a startup company called Rabble to expand the software for multiple libraries to easily use in the future. The development of this will allow libraries that do not have the funds or the IT departments to start their own programs an easy way to begin and develop their own collections. If this software is developed it will allow libraries across the nation to develop similar music projects with an easy set model to follow (Hiser, 2014b).
(Hiser, 2015)
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Rabble is helping libraries to build open source systems to share local music and was created from the Yahara Music Library. Rabble can help other cities to build their local music collections just as Madison Public Library did with their Yahara Music Library, and be able to easily share the work of artists in their communities. The software that will run the program is called MUSICat and is being developed WITH libraries to create a unique program to share these local music programs through public libraries (Hiser, 2015).
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(Hiser, 2015)
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The future of music in public libraries is unknown at this time. Without leniency from the record companies with copyright laws libraries will be unable to keep up in this digital age. Music projects such as the Yahara Music Library allow cooperation with libraries and bring the local music scene forward. If other music is unavailable for download, maybe this will make patrons even more eager to check out local music. This helps develop the local scene and promotes the bands, as well as the library. The future of libraries is uncertain, but it definitely could use more projects like the Yahara Music Library.