Citizen DJ

Inventing Entertainment

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.

View this collection on the Library of Congress website

Download files in bulk

A set of 4361 audio samples have been automatically generated from this collection for use in your favorite music production software. It contains 265 audio segments and 4096 one-shot audio clips, ideal for use in samplers.

Rights & access

The works in this collection have been identified to be in the public domain and are free to use and reuse without restriction. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the works, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Attribution is recommended but not required.

Why is this free to use?

All recordings made by the companies of Thomas A. Edison between 1890 and 1929 are in the public domain because the assets of Edison Records were transferred to the National Park Service, a federal agency, in the 1950s.

Suggested credit line

Citizen DJ Project, Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.

Browse & preview files

Click the files below to preview the audio segments: