Welcome to Buttercup Classics - devoted to bringing you unique and diverse classical music downloads, specialising in releases which have disappeared from the Gramophone catalogues.
The CD revolution of the 1980s spawned thousands of new releases, all vying for a place in record stores. New releases dominated distributors' schedules - with a little opportunity of a long shelf life for previous issues. Increasingly, "back catalogue" became an impossibility as more and more titles flooded the market. Now, in the new millennium, rising new production costs have caused some music to simply never reach the market place; instead it lies dormant in archives waiting to be rediscovered.
Freshly launched in 2009, Buttercup Classics aims to bring to your attention much of this important, unique and often rare music - which in some instances - you may have missed. We hope you will enjoy these many and diverse performances of music which have done much to expand our musical horizons.
Buttercup Classics understands the importance of sound quality to listeners of classical music. We offer you digital downloads in both lossless CD quality FLAC and 320Kbps MP3 formats, and, where possible, our music itself is sourced from original master tapes - to remove quality compromises which can occur in factory processing.
All music available for purchase at Buttercup Classics is completely unencumbered with restrictive and unreliable DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology. We deliver all our downloads in standard MP3 and FLAC formats - this allows you to have complete control over where you store your music and what devices you can play it on. You're free to backup your music and copy it to other computers and devices (iPods, CDs etc.) for your own personal use.
After purchasing music at Buttercup Classics, you have a full 14 days to download your music. If your download gets cut off, or your connection is slow there is ample time to complete your download. If you need to download again, a repeat download is also available.
Instead a generic 30 second preview for each track, Buttercup Classics presents a smaller number of more relevant, carefully chosen and longer previews for each album - often comprising an entire track. We believe that this type of preview is more helpful to classical music listeners - effectively capturing the spirit of a recording for your perusal.
Unlike most other music download sites, you're not forced to sign up for an account at Buttercup Classics. You can simply add an album or track to your cart, checkout and pay without needing to enter a username or password. After entering your payment details, you'll be presented with a unique, personal web page containing links to your downloads (an email is also sent with the same information, for your convenience). This page can then be bookmarked - you can return to it at any time in the future, even after your downloads have expired. And if you do choose to sign up for an account - you'll be able to download them again, if the need arises (see below).
If you do choose to sign up for a Buttercup Classics account, you gain unique access to a free "repeat download" of every album or track you've purchased. This means that if after purchasing from us, you need to download your files for a second time (you may have e.g. lost your laptop or accidentally deleted your files) you can log into your account and enable a second download of a recording, which will be available to you for another 14 days. (Note repeat downloads are subject to conditions).
