News
April 2009
The number of Australian music resources in the Music Australia service continues to grow. On 9 April 2009 the database contained 239,120 resources, with 63,818 of these available online or with an online component.
The online resources include the National Library’s digitised Oral History and Folklore Collection. These audio files are available for everyone to listen to at their place of choice, be it at home, work, a library or anyplace with an internet connection. To discover the rich resources in the various folklore collections in Music Australia try the following search from any browser: www.musicaustralia.org/search/folklore+collection
September 2008
Since April 2007 Destra Music has been a provider of online contemporary digital audio to Music Australia. Destra Media has been taken over by the Prime Media Group, whose business review has resulted in the closure of Destra Music's digital download and online purchase through e-commerce services. For more information about Destra Music's business changes see the Destra media release for 25 August 2008 "Review of company strategy and business activities".
Unfortunately, as a result, the e-commerce option to purchase digital downloads from Destra Music through Music Australia will cease on 1 October 2008. All downloading and licensing for previously purchased Destra Music items should be completed by 31 October 2008. After this date Destra Music will no longer support downloading and licensing for purchased tracks and albums through Music Australia.
We recommend that customers who purchased tracks or albums from Destra Music through the Music Australia service back up these tracks and albums to audio CDs before 31 October 2008. Please note that your purchased tracks and albums should continue to play on your existing authorised computers.
Music Australia is committed to providing an ongoing service for Australian music. We are continuing to investigate new solutions for access to all types and formats of Australian music.
April 2008
Music Australia 2.0 has been now been operating for a year, providing access to a significant number of contemporary online digial audio tracks, with 30 second sound samples and with the option to purchase for download. The number of resources in Music Australia continues to grow as libraries, archives and universities catalogue, describe and expose their collections to researchers, musicians, performers and music fans covering all ages and genres.
There are now over 230,000 resources available in the service, with 62,000+ online or having an online component. The contemporary digital audio files, together with a number of online historical sound recordings, combined with the many 19th and 20th century notated music scores, and other material such as manuscripts, websites, pictures, books and theses, all contribute to provide a comprehensive picture of Australia's musical identity.
To assist our users and researchers we have now included Citation information on the full record display for each of the resources described in Music Australia. The citation, a permanent identifier, can be used to directly link, from any web browser, to a specific resource description in Music Australia.
May 2007
The National Library of Australia and a leading Australian digital music provider, destra Media, have entered into an innovative government-business partnership to enhance the Music Australia online service.
Music Australia, hosted by the National Library, showcases Australia's musical culture and helps people to discover and explore all types of Australian music - from the earliest published to the latest hits. Its innovation lies in the way it links the business, arts, academic, cultural and information sectors to provide a coherent vision of the nation's music.
The new partnership has expanded Music Australia, with more than 45,000 tracks of contemporary Australian music and added a new e-commerce function that allows people to obtain in-copyright recordings through legal downloads.
For more details see the National Library's media release.
April 2007
The Music Australia service has been in operation for just over 2 years and we are now very pleased to announce the introduction of the new improved version on 3 April 2007. Since the launch of Music Australia in March 2005, we have continually sought ways to improve the service for our users. The User Survey conducted in mid 2006 identified some issues, and these combined with our planned enhancements, were integrated into a fresh new look for Music Australia.
We have significantly increased the number of resources and online content in the service, with the addition of 45, 000 online tracks of contemporary in-copyright sound recordings. We now provide access to descriptions of 211, 889 resources, with 55, 954 of them available online, and with an additional 4798 people and organisation records associated with Australian music.
Some key new features in the service include:
- new display features, which enliven the service with images or icons for all online resources.
- new navigation features, in particular improving the directions to buy, borrow or copy items.
- more guidance as to how to use the service, in particular with guidance for users to view, to listen etc.
- clearer distinction in the display of resource records and people and organisations records.
- more communication about the purpose, scope and functionality of the service.
- navigation between albums and individual tracks in albums is also supported, and cover art and artist data is included.
- e-commerce functionality to enable you to purchase and legally download in-copyright tracks for your own use.
Keep visiting to see what new items we have in Music Australia. And let us know what you think of our new look.
March 2006
On 14 March 2006 MusicAustralia will celebrate it's 1st Birthday.
Since MusicAustralia was launched on 14 March 2005, the service has proved very popular and the high usage in the first 12 months has resulted in over 8.1 million page views recorded. A tremendous result. This high usage has greatly exceeded our original estimation of traffic and usage of the service and we look forward to working with all our partners and contributors to continue the success of the past year.
To assist us with future development and use of MusicAustralia we have engaged consultants to conduct a survey of users of the service. This online survey is due to be launched on 13 March 2006 and will run for around 2 weeks. The user will be asked if they want to participate and if they agree, they will be presented with the survey at the close of their current MusicAustralia session. The survey should take approx 5 minutes to complete and asks questions about the content of MusicAustralia - searching and finding music resources and the type of resources wanted and used - as well as questions on navigation and personal demographics. It will take some time for the consultants to compile the results, analyse the data and report back to us. When received we will look carefully at the report and will provide feedback on the results and findings to all our MusicAustralia partners and contributors.
April 2005
The MusicAustralia website, Australia's most comprehensive music information resource, launched on 14 March 2005, recorded 27 000 page views the day after the launch. A total of 335 304 page views were recorded during March 2005 - more than 10 000 page views a day.
The number of records on the MusicAustralia resource database continues to grow. On 27 April 2005 there were 140 105 resources, with 10 398 of them available online.
March 2005
MusicAustralia was formally launched by Senator the Hon. Rod Kemp, Minister for the Arts and Sport, at the National Library of Australia on 14 March 2005.
Nearly two hundred guests were treated to performances by Joanna Cole and Michael Clark, the Australian Youth Orchestra String Quartet, Col Joye, AM and the Stiff Gins. Robyn Archer, AO, was guest speaker for the evening.
February 2005
MusicAustralia, bringing you Australia's Music: Online, in time, was released on 24 February 2005.
The principal development organisations, the National Library of Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive (a division of the Australian Film Commission) , are proud to bring you Australia's most comprehensive music information resource.
The National Library of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive (a division of the National Film and Sound Archive), the Australian Music Centre and Australian Music Online (an initiative of the Australia Council for the Arts) collaborated to deliver a pilot service in August 2002. This small pilot - providing access to just 170 digital music resources - encouraged a wide range of organisations to contribute to MusicAustralia and to start developing their digital music collections.
