“The Concert” is a classical music podcast produced by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum which is released under our Music Sharing license. Here is what we had to say back in 2006 when the podcast first launched:

The podcast features unreleased live performances by master musicians and talented young artists recorded from the museum’s Sunday Concert Series. “The Concert” includes music by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, and Chopin for solo piano, orchestra, string quartet, and voice. A new podcast will be posted on the 1st and 15th of every month; users can subscribe to receive free, automatic updates delivered directly to their computers or mp3 players. With “The Concert,” the Gardner Museum becomes the first art museum to encourage sharing and free distribution of its online programming by using a Creative Commons license.

“The Concert” is now on episode 54 and has reached over 1 million downloads, bringing classical chamber music to people across the globe in an unprecedented fashion. While the content of the podcast – lush arrangements of beautiful compositions recorded by experts – is at the heart of why “The Concert” has done so well, the Music Sharing license employed by ISGM has made that content more immediately sharable, stripping away legal hurdles that might inhibit casual listeners while protecting ISGM’s commercial rights.