Yup, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (PLCH) has just gotten even awesomer. They've signed on to Freegal letting anybody with a library card download free music.
Sounds perfect, right? Free downloading from my computer via the library's site. Well, sure, that's frickin' cool.
There are a few drawbacks, however. First, it's only music from Sony's catalog, and it's not the full content of Sony's catalog. For example, Cake has albums available through Freegal, but it's not their newest album yet (even though it came out two months ago.)
Secondly, you can't download a full album. The limit is three songs per user per week (the count resets on Monday morning), so that means you'll have to schedule your downloads for the next month or two if you want to get the full album (which is what I'm doing, trying to get the entirety of 7 Worlds Collide's The Sun Came Out disc).
Thirdly, the service isn't apparently popular with all the librarians out there in the blogosphere. Check out these two posts in particular that show pretty strong criticism for Freegal's service in a number of areas...
- Changing from a library that purchases and lends to one that purchases and gives to its patrons is a fundamental change for libraries.
- The cost per download is in the range of $1 to $1.10 (I don't know the specifics of the PLCH contract with Freegal) - as much as it would be for me to purchase those same songs from Amazon or iTunes directly.
- Freegal asked the second poster to remove a post about libraries and digital music. Not a library-friendly thing to do.
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