Philly company digitizes 25,000 old records and they're free for you to listen to or download.
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Twenty-five thousand songs recorded onto 78RPM discs in the early 20th century have been released online, for free.
They are the first batch of an estimate 400,000-piece virtual record collection to be made available by the Internet Archive, from gospel by the Tuskegee Institute Sings, to opera recorded in Italy, to novelty tunes by Spike Jones, to hot — though obscure — jazz.
The task of digitizing all of those old records is happening in Chestnut Hill.
In a little storefront building on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia's Chestnut Hill neighborhood, George Blood Audio LP, an audio preservation company, has been quietly preserving America's musical heritage, one 78 at a time."
I can't even imagine the work it took to do this. Bravo.
Enjoy.
Holy stacks of wax!
I went dumpster diving and scrolling in the fantastic river of 78 records and may have seen 500 by the time I fell asleep and had a deep summertime nap.
The whole thing reminds me of the Goodwill Store that was located near my parent's home at the very end of the 78 RPM era when 33 1/3 RPM albums took over, and there were vast stacks of 78s for a dime a copy.
It was in an age when radio station's had large transcription turntables for playing 16" discs, and used the same turntables to play 10" 78's.
Those were the days when some of us ran tube transmitters from Knight, Layfeyette Radio or Allied.
The future is back with the past!
My guess is that they're not going to stay up for long (unfortunately), due to copyright issues (there are plenty of records there that even I in Canada, which has much more liberal copyright laws than the U.S., won't play on my all public domain station).
This collection has been made available for use in research, teaching, and private study only. Copyrights that may exist in these materials have not been transferred to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive does not advise as to the copyright status of items in our collections. Our terms of use require that users make use of the Internet Archive’s collections at their own risk and ensure that such use is non-infringing and in accordance with all applicable laws. It is the user’s responsibility to determine whether permission may be required for a given use of these materials, or whether such use is authorized by law.
This Rights Information was found within the links provided by Blue Bucket Radio
http://great78.archive.org/about/
I saw the legal notice as well.
I guess they could try that approach, but I believe that you require a mechanical license (I think that's what its called) to reproduce copyrighted works on a website for distribution for ANY reason. I personally think its ridiculous, but then copyright owners rarely ask me my opinion on these matters.