National Jukebox: Recordings from 1901 - 1925

[charangohabsburg]

In the early sixties the company RCA blew up their old buildings including their archives containing thousands of master records of the Victor label (which existed from 1901 - 1929), prior to shoving the ruins into River Delaware where then piers were built onto.

None the less these recordings were not completely lost but have survived in libraries and private collections. Now they reappear on Internet. By the end of May 2011 the Library of Congress (= national library of the United States) started a website called National Jukebox containing 10000 (ten thousand) recordings from the catalogue of the Victor company.

Today, the rights of these recordings belong to the Sony group but they offer it for free as streaming media (not as download).

Short translation of the introduction of an article that appeared in the newspaper Tagesanzeiger, 21.6.2011 (Zürich, Switzerland).

• http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/
• http://www.cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/