Do yourself a favor and check out the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's new website, redone for the chamber orchestra by the Twin Cities firm Bust Out Solutions and launched in late February.

The headline? More than 100 full-length SPCO live recordings from the past five or so years, free for the streaming. This kind of open access to an orchestra's archive on its website is quite rare, especially in the United States, where musician contracts often make the "free streaming" part of it off-limits. The Minnesota Orchestra site offers free downloads (after registration) of select short bits and first movements, and then charges fees of $5 to $6 for downloading MP3s of entire symphonies and longer pieces. This option will appeal to those who want to download music for replay. So far, the list of music at www.minnesotaorchestra.org has just five symphonic works. "We want to make it really easy for people to experience what we do," said Jessica Etten of the SPCO. She equated the new streaming audio with the SPCO's program of aggressively lowering ticket prices at its live concerts. All the free music is thanks in part to a clause in the SPCO musicians' contract allowing it. Another key partner is Minnesota Public Radio, which made the recordings for broadcast. In an age of ever-encroaching pay walls, the SPCO's site is a marvel of free access. And the music you can hear? There is plenty of standard fare by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi and Beethoven (though there is nothing standard about, say, its Beethoven Violin Concerto with soloist and SPCO Artistic Partner Thomas Zehetmair, which is out of this world). But the list also includes lesser-known works and composers, including Ernst Krenek, Giya Kanchali, Alec Wilder and Thomas Ades. You can hear live performances by Zehetmair as well as such big names as Josh Bell, Jonathan Biss and Leila Josefowicz. Which is not to underplay the musicianship of such featured SPCO players as violinist Steven Copes, clarinetist Timothy Paradise, violist Maiya Papach and oboist Kathry Greenbank. SPCO plans to add more concerts in the future, so this trove of streamable music from a world-class orchestra will only grow over time. What'd we say about doing yourself a favor? Please add comments here about your favorites from the site.