Free Neil Young's Entire Catalog in Hi-Res on Stream

http://www.neilyoungarchives.com

SlimTim

Did you mean on “Stream”? That’s what it looks like is offered, though I wondered if this was a promo for some kind of new music service from the game distribution platform Steam.

Parts weren’t very clear to me. It looks like you have to sign up to get any site access. I used a (unique, as usual) email account and got right in, with a welcome email that has important information too:
“Between now and June 30, you’ll have free access to the entire Neil Young Archives with unlimited streaming. So have at it! (And don’t worry; once your trial is up, you’ll be able to sign up for a subscription at a very modest cost.)”

So that’s quite a while, though it won’t stay free forever. There are “buy” options all over, with either a ‘high quality’ option from a vendor I didn’t recognize or links to standard Amazon pages for the albums. I don’t see any intended way to save media now.

Once signed up, the site overuses a stupid “file cabinet” metaphor that mostly obscures navigation and options. But most clicks seem to lead to music listings.

I had to disable my Disable HTML5 Autoplay chrome add-in to get playback to work - that’s not too unusual, I have to do that to preview MP3s on other sites too.

I thought I had a lot of Neil Young music. I’m a casual fan like anyone sensible and my age, but also got a free copy of the collection also named “Neil Young Archives” via a FW link a couple years ago. But it looks like there’s a ton here I don’t have, most of it I’ve not heard of.

I’m kind of an anti-audiophile. I am far too cheap to understand how much some people spend on equipment, and remember scoffing at Neil’s promotion of a new portable player a few years ago that supports some crazy bitrate and fidelity. And he’s continuing the audio quality crusade here. I’m playing back with default settings, which I think mostly means a high bitrate MP3.

I have to admit, the quality is excellent. I’ll have to compare some of the same songs I’ve ripped from CD. I may have a holiday project to re-rip them all with better rates.