The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. Until now, of course.
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posted by carsonb
on Jun 28, 2011 -
17 comments
The Birka Jazz Archive is a treasure trove of record jackets from all eras of jazz. American releases are grouped by label (for example,
Columbia,
Blue Note,
Atlantic, etc.) with, in some case, further sub-categorization by designers or visual artists (such as the amazing
David Stone Martin). European releases are sorted by country (
France,
Sweden,
Germany, etc.) and it all adds up to a fabulous online resource for jazz fans and graphic design fans alike.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Apr 17, 2011 -
9 comments
British Library's world music archive goes online for free. Amounts to around 28,000 recordings dating from 1898 onwards,
according to The Guardian this equates with "about 2,000 hours of singing, speaking, yelling, chanting, blowing, banging, tinkling and many other verbs associated with what is a uniquely rich sound archive" The weirdest one? - possibly the recording of an Assamese woodworm munching its way through a window frame in the dead of night.......
posted by MajorDundee
on Sep 4, 2009 -
31 comments
Pilgrim Productions Presents: Voices Across America, an archive of gospel music in a variety of genres, submitted for free play and download by church groups and folk and traditional groups across the country and beyond. Style, age, and quality vary greatly, but fans of noncommercial music will enjoy hunting for the gems of blues, Cajun, bluegrass, choral, shapenote, country, vintage, and mountain gospel and more.
posted by Miko
on May 24, 2009 -
15 comments
WFMU's Free Music Archive, "an online digital library of music that will allow music fans, webcasters and podcasters to listen, download, and stream for free, with no restrictions, registration or fees. And it will all be legal." Still pre-launch, but there's already
quite a bit of music available on the site, including a
sampler CD.
posted by cog_nate
on Jul 15, 2008 -
18 comments
The University of South Carolina recently completed an
ambitious survey of all medieval texts in the state for an exhibit at the university library. All the works were scanned and archived electronically. However, not only can you
view the texts online, you can hear the university's chorus
sing (MP3) the musical manuscripts.
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posted by 1f2frfbf
on Mar 18, 2008 -
8 comments
Head Back to Mono in 32k at the
rineke.net records archive, where a rather consistent curator has digitized a goody chunk of his record collection. It's posted in more-or-less every iteration imaginable. Observe the
linked scans (1 mb page, careful!) of the covers (also in multiple resolutions up to full-size). Note the
records themselves, in sleeve or
out, depending. Most especially, savor the clean, low-res mono mp3s that
cry out to be played through the dashboard speakers of a 1967 Dodge Dart.
Bonus Big Beat Bonanza: The site's author is also behind the
similarly detailed archive of shows by ex-WFMU dj
The Hound, from 1987 through 1995, heavy on the
rare regional sides beloved of certain of my pals down New Orleans way.
Last, but not least, rineke.net hosts the adventures of
a platoon of Tux clones, sealing my geek admiration for the overseer of the site. There's
more, of course. My propeller beanie's off to you, sir, and long may you wave, or particle, as is your choice and preference.
(Permission was sought and granted to post this, as I feard for the site's bandwidth. Have at it, Mefites!
posted by mwhybark
on Aug 12, 2004 -
7 comments
delenda mp3.com est "Vivendi Universal recently sold the MP3.com domain to CNet. However, they're not selling the approximately one million songs on the archive. (recorded by over 250,000 artists) Instead, they're simply destroying it as of December 3. MP3.com's founder and former CEO, Michael Robertson, is pleading with Vivendi to allow the Internet
Archive to preserve the songs." (via
Slashdot)
posted by kablam
on Nov 23, 2003 -
16 comments
The Scopitone was a French video jukebox that made its debut in 1960 and was imported into the US in 1964. Although they usually featured high production values, catchy melodies, and lots of gratuitous cheesecake, the singers were often relative unknowns and the music was square even by the standards of the day. Consequently, they never caught on in a big way outside of Europe, and many of the original Scopitone jukeboxes and films were destroyed. Fortunately for us, a few Scopitone enthusiasts have
catalogued the songs,
scanned the advertisements, and even preserved a few Quicktime clips of the original
French and
American Scopitone films.
posted by MrBaliHai
on May 4, 2003 -
9 comments
