Music: Free Online Recordings

Excerpts from Yale's Historical Sound Recordings Collection (HSR)

Some of the earliest published disc recordings, these offer a unique insight into the earliest years of music and spoken word recording. Off-campus users must agree to terms.

Rare and unpublished recordings featuring music by Charles Ives. Off-campus users must agree to terms.

African American performers and composers and the vocal music forms they influenced, especially opera, art songs and Negro spirituals composed for concert performance.

Historical sound recording collections including American music, oral histories and speeches, from the Library of Congress.

80,000 recordings of music, spoken word, and human and natural environments

Almost 5000 sounds files available via the Find Sound Files facility, transferred from 78rpm discs held by the King's Sound Archive and King's College London. A broad range of composers of the classical repertory, with an emphasis on Schubert.

(University of California-Santa Barbara). Digital files of more than 10,000 cylinder recordings.

Part of the Percussive Arts Society Museum.

A variety of recordings from around the world, from wax cylinders to the present, music and spoken word.

A daily classical music magazine that features reviews, interviews, and audio clips.

Historical Recordings from the Library of Congress

A "who's who of sound recorders" spanning roughly from 1878-1940

Recordings made between 1888 and 1929, music and spoken word

Check out the "Cylinder of the Month" page.

From the Library and Archives Canada