One of the perks of working in the Music, Film & Audio department of the library is that I’m always discovering new music to check out and listen to on my daily commute. Unfortunately, the CD player in my car stopped working sometime last year, and so I was stuck listening to the radio—or so I thought.
That was until I discovered the library’s streaming music services, and I started checking out new music for my commute again via my smartphone. One of my favorite online library services is called Hoopla. Before I share some of my current music picks that you can check out from Hoopla right now, here’s a little refresher on what Hoopla is all about:
- Hoopla has a large collection of movies, TV shows, documentaries, music albums and audiobooks, all available for checkout with a current CLP or ACLA library card. A nice thing about Hoopla is that all content is available for streaming, but can also be downloaded on most mobile devices, and there is never a waitlist.
- You can check out up to 10 items a month, and downloads are automatically re-set at the first of the month.
- Most movie and TV content is available for 3 days after borrowing (a very small number of movie titles are available for 2 days). Music albums are available for 7 days, and audiobooks are available for 21 days.
- The first time you sign up for Hoopla, you will be asked to choose your local library and enter your library card number. You will then be prompted to enter an email address and create a password. This will be your user name and password that you will use to log into your account in the future.
- Hoopla has been making improvements to its app so that on some devices it will be easier to rewind/fast forward audio files, or listen to them at variable speeds. Also, Kindle Fire HDX users will now be able to find the Hoopla app in their app store.
- Did you know that Hoopla can also be viewed on some TVs? If you want to project Hoopla onto a larger screen using your notebook, tablet, or smart phone, this is now possible on TVs that have screen-casting capability.
And now, here are a handful of (newish) albums I’ve checked out recently and enjoyed:
What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World / The Decemberists
No Cities To Love / Sleater-Kinney
St. Vincent / St. Vincent
Wine Dark Sea / Jolie Holland
I Never Learn / Lykke Li
Here And Nowhere Else / Cloud Nothings
Sunbathing Animal / Parquet Courts
They Want My Soul / Spoon
Happy listening,
Tara
PS – As you can probably tell, my tastes tend towards the pop and indie-rock genres – rest assured, there are plenty of great albums in genres as disparate as hip-hop, country, jazz and electronica. Just tell us what you’re looking for, and we’ll be happy to make a recommendation!
Eleventh Stack 