National Jukebox website <\/a>have been unavailable for more than 100 years, a significant chunk of them because of complex laws controlling ownership of sound recordings, which did not become subject to federal copyright laws until 1972.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAmong the highlights are vintage performances by celebrated classical musicians, including Enrico Caruso and Fritz Kreisler; the first blues recording, \u201cLivery Stable Blues,\u201d made in 1917 by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band; a comedy skit by the Vaudeville team of Gallagher and Shean; speeches of President Teddy Roosevelt; piano performances by jazz-ragtime pioneer Eubie Blake; and music of the John Philip Sousa Band conducted by its namesake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis really blows the top off of a lot of stuff, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d said Chris Sampson, associate dean of USC\u2019s Thornton School of Music. \u201cThere are so many angles from the academic perspective of how this would be a resource. Just in my small corner of the universe of teaching songwriting, the ability to be able to go to the source so students can see the tradition of American music and American songwriting, to see this lineage and to be able to draw upon it is going to be enormous\u2026. To me that\u2019s just gold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sony, which claims to control more historical recordings than any other of the three existing major label groups \u2014 EMI, Warner and Universal music groups \u2014 has made available all pre-1925 acoustic recordings originally made for the Victor Talking Machine Co., the vast majority of which are not now in circulation. The next phase of the project, announced Tuesday morning at the Library of Congress\u2019 offices in Washington, D.C., will add early discs made for Columbia Records, which also is under the Sony umbrella. The project offers no direct financial gain to Sony, although the company will retain the rights for the commercial release of anything newly coming available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to release this site with more than 10,000 sides,\u201d said Gene DeAnna, head of the library\u2019s recorded sound section. \u201cFor this project, we\u2019ve had to pull every copy of our Victor acoustic recordings, examine them all and select what we thought was the best and send it upstairs for possible digitization.\u201d DeAnna said he estimates there are roughly an equal number of Columbia discs that project officials expect to add to the Jukebox this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One major component of the project, which has been about two years in the making, is a digital discography of every Sony-owned acoustic 78-rpm recording, organized in a searchable database, prepared at UC Santa Barbara; each entry contains extensive information ranging from personnel on each recording, the date and locations they were made down to which take from the recording session is on each disc. The library\u2019s files also will be the source for thousands of pages of documents and images of original labels, artist biographies and other text and photographic material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of the recordings from the late 19th and early 20th century that are now streamable, \u201cOnly the Caruso stuff is currently available,\u201d DeAnna said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe only artist whose work has remained in print since it was recorded is Caruso,\u201d added Matthew Barton, the library\u2019s curator of recorded sound. \u201cYou\u2019ve always been able to get Caruso, in whatever the current formats were. But he wasn\u2019t the only star of the day, he wasn\u2019t the only opera singer recording \u2014 but he\u2019s the only one that has been consistently available from the rights holder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That speaks to copyright issues that have kept thousands of recordings off the market even when there have been small labels that would be interested in issuing them to the niche audiences they appeal to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because sound recordings didn\u2019t get singled out for federal copyright law protection until 1972, ownership of pre-1972 recordings is complicated by an often impossible-to-unravel web of state or common laws governing them. A proposal is making its way through Congress to bring earlier recordings under the 1972 law to enhance public access and ensure that at some point the recordings go into the public domain. As the law stands, many recordings dating as far back as 1890 will not enter the public domain before 2067, 177 years after they were made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s extremely exciting if even a corner of this starts to break the dam and get these things beyond the walls of Library of Congress,\u201d USC\u2019s Sampson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Library and Sony officials hope the streaming access will create new audiences for the old recordings. In the event the National Jukebox creates a breakout hit recorded in 1909, DeAnna said, \u201cWe have an agreement with Sony that if anything is reissued for the commercial market, we\u2019ll take them down\u201d from streaming on the Jukebox site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Library of Congress staff and guest programmers will create playlists by genre, time period, artist and other themes, and members of the public will be able to submit their own playlists for consideration for publication on the Jukebox website. Users also will be able to share their playlists and embed the audio player on social media websites such as Facebook and MySpace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The collaboration between Sony and the Library of Congress is intended to keep any cost to taxpayers to a minimum and to make the streaming files available quickly. In return, Sony will receive data on which recordings are streamed most frequently to help determine which may have commercial potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Jukebox Project also will include a digitized version of the Victrola Book of the Opera, a guide the Victor label published with opera plot outlines, illustrations and other aids to expand opera fans\u2019 knowledge and appreciation, along with offerings of their own performances of the works described.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve scanned the whole book and you can page turn through it, and when you roll the cursor over the a particular recording, you can play that selection,\u201d DeAnna said. \u201cFor instance, there\u2019s the famous quartet in [Verdi\u2019s] \u2018Rigoletto.\u2019 The catalog lists 11 versions, and you can compare Caruso\u2019s to [Irish tenor] John McCormack\u2019s, or the Six Brown Brothers\u2019 saxophone sextet version. There\u2019s also an accordion version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou really get the sense there wasn\u2019t such a distinction between high-brow and low-brow; opera was really part of popular entertainment then,\u201d DeAnna said. \u201cCan you imagine Lady Gaga singing [Mozart\u2019s] \u2018Queen of the Night\u2019 on her next CD?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a great thing. 10,000 recordings made available for streaming from the Victor catalog. What’s funny to me, is that somehow Sony thinks they own the copyright on these recordings which are clearly in the public domain. At least they are sharing it! Library of Congress and Sony Music team for \u2018National Jukebox\u2019 free … <\/p>\n
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