Baidu's MP3 search engine used to be my first stop when studying anything Chinese. Absurdly, even recordings of relatively rare poetry (for instance) were easy to find. These recordings were not copyrighted, and were usually made by individuals just for fun. It was often possible to hear the ambient sounds of people's houses in the background of the recordings. As a bonus, sentimental backing tracks were often included. For a language geek, it was a dream come true.
That said, mp3.baidu.com had an enemy. The last time I ever tried to download a recording, it was of a famous, funny Lu Xun story called Kong Yiji. Most of the download links failed, but when I found one that worked, it was a parody recording of "The Real Slim Shady" by someone with a Hubei accent.
What gives?
I'm aware that librivox has some recordings of Chinese poetry, but really for the amount of stuff that was previously accessible using mp3.baidu.com, it's a very poor substitute.