Citizen DJ

Citizen DJ is officially open to the public and all sounds on this website are completely free-to-use for your remixing needs. Read a behind-the-scenes retrospective post on this experimental project and residency.

This is a project by Brian Foo as part of the 2020 Innovator in Residence Program at the Library of Congress.

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Thousands of public domain recordings have been added in 2022!
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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: Inventing Entertainment

Inventing Entertainment

Music and Spoken word

Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: Variety Stage Sound Recordings and Motion Pictures

Variety Stage Sound Recordings and Motion Pictures

Music and Sketches

The 61 motion pictures in the Variety Stage Sound Recordings and Motion Pictures include animal acts, burlesque, dance, comic sketches, dramatic excerpts, dramatic sketches, physical culture acts, and tableaus. The films represented date from copyrights of 1897 to 1920. Although not actually filmed on a theatrical stage, they sought to recreate the atmosphere of a theater performance by showing the types of vaudeville acts and performers that were popular at the time.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: The Joe Smith Collection

The Joe Smith Collection

Interviews

More than 25 years ago, retired music executive Joe Smith accomplished a Herculean feat—he got more than 200 celebrated singers, musicians and industry icons to talk about their lives, music, experiences and contemporaries. In 2012 Smith donated this treasure trove of unedited sound recordings to the nation's library.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: Free Music Archive

Free Music Archive

Music

Free Music Archive is a website devoted to distribution and curation of rights-free music. The Library of Congress has archived this website as part of its Web Cultures Web Archive, which includes sites documenting the creation and sharing of emergent cultural traditions on the web.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: MusicBox Project

MusicBox Project

Music

In January 2010 Dyann Arthur, independent folklorist, musicologist and Berklee College of Music alumni, founded MusicBox Project, a non-profit corporation in the state of Washington, whose mission it is to document and preserve our musical history while advancing music education and occupational avenues of creation and performance. Beginning in 2009, Dyann and Rick Arthur travelled through America meeting and interviewing women musicians of all ages and career levels. “Americana Women” was conceived as a three-pronged research approach: 1) an oral history interview; 2) an acoustic performance at the time and place of the interview; 3) a public performance.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: Tony Schwartz Collection

Tony Schwartz Collection

Radio, Conversations, and Found sounds

Considered a master of the electronic media, Tony Schwartz changed the face of radio and television advertising by creating socially conscientious campaigns such as the nation’s first anti-smoking ad, which led the tobacco industry to stop advertising on television and radio. Those and other materials are part of the vast archives of sound recordings and moving images created and collected by the renowned New York City sound documentarian, producer, author and teacher.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: American English Dialect Recordings

American English Dialect Recordings

Interviews, Oral histories, and Speeches

The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. They were drawn from various archives, and from the private collections of fifty collectors, including linguists, dialectologists, and folklorists.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: The National Screening Room

The National Screening Room

Government film

The National Screening Room showcases the riches of the Library's vast moving image collection, designed to make otherwise unavailable movies, both copyrighted and in the public domain, freely accessible to the viewers worldwide.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: The National Jukebox: Blues

The National Jukebox: Blues

Music

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains blues and blues-like works and performances.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: The National Jukebox: Jazz

The National Jukebox: Jazz

Music

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains jazz and musical forms that are considered to be among the roots of jazz, including ragtime.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: The National Jukebox: Folk Music

The National Jukebox: Folk Music

Music

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains American folk music of various forms.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: The National Jukebox: Opera

The National Jukebox: Opera

Opera

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection includes excerpts from operas and similar works such as operettas and oratorios.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: The National Jukebox: Musical Theater

The National Jukebox: Musical Theater

Music and Theater

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection includes works originally introduced in popular musical theater productions.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: The National Jukebox: Classical Music

The National Jukebox: Classical Music

Music

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains classical works and performances.

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A grid of clips representing the audio contained in this collection: The National Jukebox: Popular Music

The National Jukebox: Popular Music

Music

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains music considered popular at the time of recording.

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