Multimedia Review of The National Jukebox: Historical Recordings from the Library of Congress

Abstract

[From review]: The National Jukebox is the Library of Congress’s latest addition to its growing list of online digital collections. Even in its initial release (the site went “live” at the start of May 2011), the wealth of material made freely accessible here for the first time is nothing short of amazing. The collection already offers over ten thousand sides of 78-rpm records in new digital transfers that are streamable (but not downloadable) via a flash player application from within a user’s Web browser. What once required a trip to Washington, D.C., or to another equally specialized sound archive, is now accessible anywhere the internet is within reach. The project began when Sony Music Entertainment granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to digitize and stream any acoustical-era recordings originally made by what are now Sony-owned labels. The “Jukebox” currently includes a majority of the Victor Talking Machine Company’s U.S. catalogue issued from 1901 through 1925, but an expansion is forthcoming. According to the latest announcement on the National Jukebox’s home page (as of December 2011), the site will soon bring online “recordings from additional record labels, including Columbia and Okeh, along with selected master recordings from the Library of Congress Universal Music Group Collection.” Although the collection is at present restricted to a single label, Victor recorded widely—covering the gamut from classical orchestral and opera excerpts to popular song, theater music, and spoken word—and thus the Jukebox does indeed encompass the richness and variety of the nation’s musical life in the first quarter of the twentieth century.