Philly company digitizes 25,000 old records and they're free to download

Anybody seen this? I don't know how interested I am in it, but it seems to be a historically cool project.
The Great 78 Project – Community Preservation, Research, Discovery of 78rpm Records

 

At once atruistically blessed, and a reminder of how people will conspire to do the work that should have been done through cooperation between, say, The Smithsonian and record labels in general. In short, the only way it gets done, is if WE do THEIR work for them. Companies that profit from establishing significance in their works to sell ticket, yet throw up their hands when they're expected to care more about the legacy of their holdings than we have to.

Someone has to step in to preserve our social history when their own owners fail.

Oh, but don't worry, they'll jump like gazelles to re-legislate copyright law to keep Mickey out of the hands of Public Domain...

 

Fantastic resource! Thanks for posting!

 

Many of these needle drops are very well done and the built in NR tools in Adobe Audition are all that is necessary to make these needle drops presentable for airplay.

 

This is SO addicting. And look at those waveforms, chock full of dynamic range!!

 

This is a free audiophile treat.

 

I know the guy behind this. Graham Alexander, aka Alex Smith. He's a fine musician and was the "Paul" in the Beatles tribute show rain for years.

 

Not your Granpa's napster.

 

holy crap! too cool...thanks.

 

Are they victims of the loudness wars?

 

Whose gonna post DRs?

 

This is incredible. Clicking on one of those images above and it gives all sorts of information. A tremendous amount of work!

 

Well, I'm very glad someone is doing this, and disregarding copyrights. But for archival purposes, I don't know. And for copyright, I don't know. I looked for and checked this one,
Lou Monte - Somewhere There Is Someone
This one is a 78 my mother bought in 1954, before me. I have this and what's left of her small record collection, so this one is personal. On the Archive

archive.org/details/78_somewhere-there-is-someone_lou-monte-with-henri-renes-orchestra-and-chorus-charles_gbia0007033b

they have this listed as "Near Mint", and they must be kidding. The copy I have, my mother's original, is better. And this 1953/1954 recorded track exists on the original RCA full track studio tape and was released on a BMG-licensed CD from that tape. This Youtube audio was apparently taken from that CD (which I don't have)

youtube.com/watch?v=EFMgZYR5ECE

So they've made up to 12 versions of every disc? But they do not note what is different about each file they have posted, as far as I can tell. They note some things about the various ways they did the various transfers, different styli, different EQ, but what was done for each resulting audio file is not not noted. In some others I checked, some transfers are mono, some stereo. Then in the Internet Archive way they give five formats to download it. All that is not archival practice, and a lot of it is waste.

I checked a few Glenn Millers, some that I have on 78, and I have all the ones that I checked on CD and/or LP. RCA has released better versions. I have to wonder when they label something as "Near Mint" that I would grade several levels down as Good at best.
There are some superb transfers of 78s that have been put up on Youtube, and from time to time SH has called a few out.

For rare and super rare stuff, and stuff that might be tied up in rights issues or with any rights abandoned, this effort is very interesting. But they are not making it available following good archival practice. I saw a home recorded disc there - was that worth doing anything with for worldwide permanent archiving equal to Glenn Miller and even Lou Monte?

Mixed feelings about this. Better than nothing. - much better. But the odd way Internet Archive does things, everything, is odd.

 

Copyright runs out eventually, I'm pretty sure these are all public domain at this point. Copyright used to be much shorter when these works were created. It didn't get extended to ridiculous lengths until Disney decided to protect their mouse.

 

In the US, pre-1972 recordings will enter the public domain in 2067. Meanwhile, almost none of the records posted at Internet Archive are in the US public domain.

 

This is great. Thanks so much, Brad.

 

The details are in the file name. For example:



"Digitized from a shellac record, at 78 revolutions per minute. Four stylii were used to transfer this record.They are 3.8mm truncated conical, 2.3mm truncated conical, 2.8mm truncated conical, 3.3mm truncated conical. These were recorded flat and then also equalized with Turnover: 400.0, Rolloff: -18.0.

The preferred version suggested by an audio engineer at George Blood, L.P. is the equalized version recorded with the 3.3mm truncated conical stylus, and has been copied to have the more friendly filename."

The file names end in "3.8 CT EQ", "3.8 CT flat", "2.3 CT EQ", etc.

 

The copyright notice outlines that "This collection has been made available for use in research, teaching, and private study only." It also explains they don't own the copyrights. Not sure how long it will last in its current state.

 

This is the disclaimer:

"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."

*If* copyrights exist, they have not been transferred to the Internet Archive, but in many cases they no longer exist, so there's no issue.