Nonprofit Releases Thousands of Rare American Music Recordings Online (ucsb.edu) 17
The nonprofit Dust-to-Digital Foundation is making thousands of historic songs accessible to the public for free through a new partnership with the University of California, Santa Barbara. The songs represent "some of the rarest and most uniquely American music borne from the Jazz Age and the Great Depression," according to the university, and classic blues recordings or tracks by Fiddlin' John Carson and his daughter Moonshine Kate "would have likely been lost to landfills and faded from memory."
Launched in 1999 by Lance and April Ledbetter, Dust-to-Digital focused on preserving hard-to-find music. Originally a commercial label producing high-quality box sets (along with CDs, records, and books), it established a nonprofit foundation in 2010, working closely with collectors to digitize and preserve record collections. And there's an interesting story about how they became familiar with library curator David Seubert... Once a relationship is established, Dust-to-Digital sets up special turntables and laptops in a collector's home, with paid technicians painstakingly digitizing and labeling each record, one song at a time. Depending on the size of the collection, the process can take months, even years... In 2006, they heard about Seubert's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project getting "slashdotted," a term that describes when a website crashes or receives a sudden and debilitating spike in traffic after being mentioned in an article on Slashdot.
Here in 2025, the university's library already has over 50,000 songs in a Special Research Collections, which they've been uploading it to a Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) database. ("Recordings in the public domain are also available for free download, in keeping with the UCSB Library's mission for open access.") Over 5,000 more songs from Dust-to-Digital have already been added, says library curator Seubert, and "Thousands more are in the pipeline."
One interest detail? The bulk of the new songs come from Joe Bussard, a man whose 75-year obsession with record collecting earned him the name "the king of the record collectors and "the saint of 78s".
Launched in 1999 by Lance and April Ledbetter, Dust-to-Digital focused on preserving hard-to-find music. Originally a commercial label producing high-quality box sets (along with CDs, records, and books), it established a nonprofit foundation in 2010, working closely with collectors to digitize and preserve record collections. And there's an interesting story about how they became familiar with library curator David Seubert... Once a relationship is established, Dust-to-Digital sets up special turntables and laptops in a collector's home, with paid technicians painstakingly digitizing and labeling each record, one song at a time. Depending on the size of the collection, the process can take months, even years... In 2006, they heard about Seubert's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project getting "slashdotted," a term that describes when a website crashes or receives a sudden and debilitating spike in traffic after being mentioned in an article on Slashdot.
Here in 2025, the university's library already has over 50,000 songs in a Special Research Collections, which they've been uploading it to a Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) database. ("Recordings in the public domain are also available for free download, in keeping with the UCSB Library's mission for open access.") Over 5,000 more songs from Dust-to-Digital have already been added, says library curator Seubert, and "Thousands more are in the pipeline."
One interest detail? The bulk of the new songs come from Joe Bussard, a man whose 75-year obsession with record collecting earned him the name "the king of the record collectors and "the saint of 78s".
American musical heritage (Score:3)
I love projects like this. Preserving and digitizing audio recordings and films from the early 20th century that will otherwise be lost.
One example recording I found was a version of Over the rainbow by the Glenn Miller Orchestra recorded July 1939, one month before the debut of the Wizard of Oz movie that cemented that song in American popular culture. Over the Rainbow [ucsb.edu]
\o/ (Score:3, Insightful)
ALERT: Unexploited enjoyment may be about to occur - send black helicopters to recover royalties.
Re:\o/ (Score:4, Insightful)
Pfffft
These days it's just a never-ending flood of DMCA requests driven by a janky alogorithm or borked LLM
Re: \o/ (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, it may be free, and you may think it's exploitation free. I just spent 10 minutes trying to listen to a song. Any song. There must be two other people using their database, cuz it doesn't return anymore after my third search.. I found songs with no downlink and listen button. A note says certain songs are available for download, identifiable by special icon. Never found a song without icon. Didn't find a way to search for those.
Very perfect example of what it means can mean something to be free.
I'll take 5 seconds over on spotify, and see what the oldest Woody Guthrie song -they- have is. Oh I'm already listening to it.
oh look offtopic (Score:1)
I DGAF if you think talking about something else is more important than the most important thing happening on the planet right now, i.e. the ongoing Nazification of America
do this one too (Score:1)
If you can tear yourself away from protecting child molesters long enough, why not touch grass?
What about new music that's disappearing? (Score:1)
For example, the original version of Lil Nas X - Old Town Road, without Billy Ray Cyrus, is completely missing from the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
The new stuff is under copyright.
Slashdotted (Score:2)
A website hasn't been Slashdotted in 15 years.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, now we have Cloudflare and malfunctioning ad servers to prevent sites from being accessible.
I have two Dust-to-Digital box sets (Score:2)
And really enjoyed hearing a lot of the old music. One is the old gospel music, Goodbye, Babylon. And we also have the Fonotone Records collection.
Re: (Score:2)
I like that old time rock and roll
That kind of music really soothes my soul
Re: (Score:2)
And where were you The Day the Music Died?
Re: (Score:2)
Probably masturbating a public restroom..
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, those are some pretty large hands they must have.