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This week's Music Web watch deals with a subject we've been asked more than once about by readers - where to find information about Real Audio files on the net.
In December, Site Seeing featured the forthcoming 'musical orgy' from Harvard radio station WHRB Boston/Cambridge. I'm just reminding you that this particular orgy began on 9 January, continuing until 18 January, during which J S Bach's entire musical output will be played uninterrupted. If you're not within range of their transmitters, you can listen at 20kbps or 96kbps (using Windows Media Player streaming, not Real Audio).
The traditional home for information about Real Audio programme material is Real.com's Guide (previously known as timecast.com). Start with the RealGuide to classical stations, but don't ignore their directories of static files, or their RealChannels.
Yahoo! Broadcast (or broadcast.com) is Yahoo's answer to a directory of audio-visual material on the web. Again, have a look first at this site's list of classical radio stations, although it's poor compared to the RealGuide to Classical Stations and Peter Ribbens' Classical Online Radio List (see Related Links below).
La Scena Musicale - the music magazine from Canada - has a classical music audio & video guide which is reasonably useful, listing not just internet radio stations, but video clips, live links, MP3, CD company samplers and various other sections.
Although focussed more on MP3 than Real Audio, the music download directory Listen.com is also worth consideration - especially their classical music area - a fairly wide-ranging and esoteric selection.
All India Radio is broadcasting Excellency 1 - Classical Music Internet Radio. Select 'music' and then 'Classical Music 28.8k' to hear their selection of Indian classical music. Navigation is a bit contorted here, and you seem to have to register before listening.
Broadcast Live presents Radio and Television from around the world - this is their classical section - again poor compared to other lists of stations.
You probably won't see WCNY/Classic FM (Syracuse, New York) listed yet in any of the sites cataloguing classical radio stations, but they have announced that they're now streaming content via Windows Media Player. Apart from Metropolitan Opera and Syracuse Symphony Orchestra broadcasts, which they cannot transmit over the net, WCNY's 24 hour broadcasts (of which 90% is classical) are all available.
Finally, there's a website which uses real audio and video to present several cartoons which use (and are inspired by) classical music such as the Ravel Bolero and Vivaldi's Concerto in C. The sound quality suffers a bit, unfortunately, as a result of stealing bandwidth for the moving images. RealMusic-TV's Classical Music Animation Videos
Copyright © 11 January 2000 by Keith Bramich, Suckley, Worcestershire, UK
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