The New York Archive of Contemporary Music (ARC) has reached digitalization of 50.000 78-speed discs, which you can listen to and download for free.
The Archive of Contemporary Music started to maintain audiovisual material from 1985, and a little over a year ago, he worked with the Internet Archive to complete the Great 78 project and distribute it to the public.
Together with the George Blood LP and various volunteers, Great 78 has so far gone online 50.000 digitized 78 RPM trays and recordings of rolls, which you can listen to in the Internet Archive with all their parasites, as if you had a 78 turntable.
In ongoing projects, the Internet Archive actually has over 200.000 physical recordings that have been donated to it, most of them from the 1950 and earlier. These first recordings were made by shellac, and it's not the resin that made the discs today. Shellac is a fragile material that has been overcome around 1960 as it often creates unusual levels of noise and can literally break into your hands if it does not handle it properly. Without digitization, it is likely that some of these recordings will eventually be destroyed and lost in history forever.
The focus of the Internet Archive is on digitization files which are less widely available and ignored. The collection offers a wide range of early blues, bluegrass, yodeling, and several Novachord synthesizer recordings from 1941.
Digitizing these old pieces of music is a complicated process. Different stylus types can affect how a comp sounds when playedeye, και ταχύτητες αναπαραγωγής δεν είχαν τυποποιηθεί μέχρι περίπου τα τέλη της δεκαετίας του '20, που σημαίνει ότι υπάρχει συζήτηση για τη “σωστή ταχύτητα” στην οποία ένας δίσκος θα πρέπει να να παίξει. Οι εργαζόμενοι για το project αυτό πρέπει επίσης να λαμβάνουν και αισθητικές αποφάσεις, όπως η τοποθέτηση του μικροφώνου και τι συχνότητες είναι σε θέση να αναπαράγει το υλικό του δίσκου (το οποίο είναι καχεκτικό σε σύγκριση με τις σύγχρονες αναπαραγωγές sound). The goal is not to remaster one archive or remove all existing playback objects from variables such as how many times it was played or how it was originally recorded, but keep the disc as a "record artifact".
In the Internet Archive's Great 78 database, you can search by the author, who has digitized the disc, the year of the original recording, and more. When you listen to a recording, there are often alternatives or multiple versions of the same song that have been recorded with different styles. They are all available to leave comments and download them.
You can help and contribute to the Great 78 project, as you are always looking for volunteers to help improve metadata, collector contacts, 78s donations, and more. Or you can just see one of their collections and enjoy a piece of musical history.
