Library of Congress: Historical music on the internet
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Tags: Archive, Library of Congress, Music, National Jukebox, Music Archive
If, like me, you are interested in historical music recordings and different styles, the following news should be of interest to you: the American Library of Congress is releasing some recordings from its archive into the wild web with the National Jukebox.
Credits: Record Matrix Room, Berliner Gramophone Company, Montreal, QC, 1910 by Musée McCord, without copyright
It is after the jump, so it is time for a restriction… because it is not quite the free world after all: the songs are only available for streaming, download or scrobbling is not possible. However, tracks can be added to your own playlist, and if you like, you can then publish or share your playlist with others.
The different ways of accessing music are nice: in addition to the obligatory search function and listings by genre and artist, you can search for recordings made on a specific day. There are also a few playlist suggestions – for example, I recommend this nice compilation of early Tin Pan Alley with the beautiful “I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls” (1909). Here, my hope is that new playlists will soon be added to make discovering music easier. I still miss the possibility of being able to personally group the pieces according to my own keywords. But I like the allocation of meta information to the pieces, which contains information about the artist, author, recording date and much more, which is exemplary. A total of about 10,000 pieces from the years 1901 to 1925 are currently available, with more to be added gradually.
[via ReadWriteWeb]