The National Jukebox is spinning tunes – and you don't have to drop any coin to get it to play....the Library of Congress and Sony Music Entertainment announced the launch of what's being billed as "the largest collection of historical recordings ever made publicly available online."
The new website provides access to more than 10-thousand historical recordings for free on a streaming-only basis – no downloads. It covers the first quarter of the twentieth century and includes music, poetry, political speeches and other spoken word recordings. Right now, it only includes recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company, which Sony controls. The project is also a collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara – and its Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Records – which is helping to create a searchable database for every recording in the National Jukebox.
Click on "Browse All Recordings" and you can find albums by Title, Artist, Genre, Place (where the audio was recorded) or Date Range. A search of "1901" (the earliest recordings in the Jukebox) could lead you to the Haydn Quartet singing, "The Owl and the Pussycat," from September of that year.
Well, I'm excited. 
