National Geographic unveils World Music downloads service

 

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By Alun Williams

Posted on 17 Jul 2006 at 15:36

National Geographic is looking to boost sales of World Music, with a new online store. It aims to put the music into a wider context with the help of various videos, maps and features from the magazine.

You can sort the content by genre, country, artist or album. For example, you can look up Brazil, select Suba as the artist, and listen to the tracks on a couple of albums. You can hear one minute for free, but MP3 tracks cost $0.99 to download.

Featured artists range from the oud-playing Palestinian Marwan Abado to South Africa's Zulu Mobb, consisting of two rappers from Soweto.

'World music is a natural extension of nationalgeographic.com's rich multimedia experience,' said the VP of National Geographic Digital Media, Betsy Scolnik, 'World music fans around the world will be able to listen and learn in one digital experience.'

The site's self-declared aim is to 'use the language of music as a medium to tell the stories of the world.'

You can find National Geographic World Music at worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com

The music back-end is powered Calabash Music, which is described as a Fair Trade music company. What this means, according to National Geographic, is that its business model is based on artists from developing nations getting a fairer crack of the whip. In other words, world music via the Internet for those with a social conscience.

The National Geographic Society is a nonprofit scientific and educational organisation, founded in 1888 to 'increase and diffuse geographic knowledge'.