Founded in 1974, the Anthology of Recorded Music (ARM) produced an LP collection that documented America's history through its music. In the 1970s this anthology was distributed freely under the label New World Records (NWR) to thousands of libraries worldwide. It remains an important anthology for many libraries, especially those that support the teaching of American history and music. DRAM is the offspring of ARM and carries on this tradition of offering American music recordings online. This resource is a not‐for‐profit site that provides on‐demand streaming access to CD‐quality audio recordings. It contains nearly 2,000 albums from 15 independent labels. This eclectic collection offers music recordings of such genres as jazz, opera, folk, Native American, nineteenth‐century classical, musical theatre, electronic, New World and early rock.
The interface is user‐friendly and can be searched or browsed for recordings. Users can browse by composer, performer, ensemble, instrument or record label. The search mechanism employs the robust Lucerne search engine software. Searches can be performed on a variety of fields and with or without term modifiers and/or Boolean operators. Retrieved results can be sorted by title, search relevancy and by type of album or work that was retrieved. Scanned images of album covers also appear at the top of search results. Clicking on these album covers will also open the album that one can listen to with a subscription.
Listening to a recording requires a paid subscription. Logging in opens up a separate window where listeners can see the runtime of a recording. They can also advance, repeat or pause a recording in this module. The quality of the recordings retrieved and listened to by this reviewer were excellent. The “tinny” sound of streaming music in its early stages of development has disappeared. The recordings were rich, clear of any static or distortions, of excellent quality and a pleasure to peruse and select.
The recordings found in this resource represent the diversity that epitomizes American music and offers performances by such artists as Billie Holiday, Johnny Cash, Kathleen Battle, Pete Seeger and Louis Armstrong. This reviewer enjoyed listening to works written by such composers as: Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Karel Husa, Silvestre Revueltas, Gian Carlo Menotti, Mozart, Bach, Schumann, and both Elmer and Lenny Bernstein. Currently some of the music recordings found in the original New World Records collection cannot be redistributed because of copyright restrictions. However, in the autumn of 2008 DRAM will launch a radio broadcast that will play all the New World Records compilations.
Although other online streaming music resources such as (Naxos and Smithsonian Global Sound) exist, this resource is one of a kind in its emphasis on American labels and artists. Subscription prices for this resource, based on Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as adapted by JSTOR and ARTstor in the USA, are very reasonable. DRAM is highly recommended for all libraries that support music and American history collections and is a must for all music libraries with online collections.
