Free classical music: I learned today that signing up for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s email newsletter also gives you access to a streaming-music service called “Beethoven on Demand”. That seemed neat, and I’d be happy to get the TSO’s newsletter anyhow, so I signed up — and found that “Beethoven on Demand” appears to be streaming access to the entire Naxos catalogue. It’s just Naxos, sure, but it’s 20,000 CDs worth of Naxos. Not just classical, either — the whole catalogue seems to be there including jazz and world music.

You can sign up for their newsletter here. It requires a postal code, which makes me wonder if it might be limited to Toronto locals, but I’m not sure.

It streams in Windows Media Player format, which is unfortunate, but it’s still a lot of music for free.

(Also, I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.5 recently. Please let me know if you notice anything unusual.)