Saturday, January 20, 2007

(sticky) Is There An Audio Equivalent Of Youtube ?

Somewhere you can post and download out of copyright music ? 78s, music hall stuff, antique classical, WWI songs ?

UPDATE - Anonymous tells me :
You can post audio files on http://www.putfile.com and you can download some really old songs (WW1 era) from this site:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/1914.htm

If you're searching for something in particular you can try the site below which is a search engine that looks for audio and video files:
http://search.singingfish.com/sfw/home.jsp

Singing Fish is good, and it also has links to good sites like Digital History (lots of WWI stuff there) - which in turn has links.

I've registered with Odeo but there's certainly no Dame Clara Butt or Gracie Fields on board. EU copyright law (*sigh*) applies until 70 years after the author's death and 50 years (I believe) for recordings, so if I've understood correctly a 1956 recording of a folk-song or Beethoven piece is out of copyright, while a 1912 recording of "Alexander's Rag Time Band" will be in copyright until 2059, thanks to the longevity of its writer. The 70-year EU rule is 75 years in the US, thanks to the late Sonny Bono.

(Sonny Bono died by skiing into a tree - something I've always tried to avoid. It's lovely skiing in woods but trees are very solid objects).

Any more sites, anyone ?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can post audio files on http://www.putfile.com and you can download some really old songs (WW1 era) from this site:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/1914.htm

If you're searching for something in particular you can try the site below which is a search engine that looks for audio and video files:
http://search.singingfish.com/sfw/home.jsp

Blithering Bunny said...

Why not myspace?

Anonymous said...

The Internet Archive has a wealth of audio files that can be streamed or up- and downloaded. Arthur Pryor takes my fancy, for example, with a rendition of Dixie amongst other things.

Those who prefer Garry Owen have to look here instead.

Treemo is a relatively new service that features
audio, video and photo sharing. This is the channel of the Boot Sale Sounds blogger.

Not quite what you asked for, but possibly interesting is a shellac expert/enthusiast with an interesting blog that features old songs and the like at Shellac Shanty. Well worth a visit. He also has a couple of other audio blogs.

Incidentally, I did find a 78rpm source at YouTube. Sadly the sound quality is unenhanced and therefore quite poor, but there are a number of interesting songs and tunes to be found there. Amusingly and oddly each video shows the records spinning round.

Anonymous said...

Back to copyright. Artists and songwriters get royalties but these are classed separately. Hence Cliff will lose his artist copyright and hence his income from sales and airplay of 'Move It' in the second half of next year. However the song's writer, Ian Samwell, will retain his until 70 years after his death.

It was Brian Epstein's financial acumen which caused him to sit Lennon and McCartney down and say, "listen lads you'll get a whole lot more money if you write your own numbers". Thus in rock and roll it's considered a poor show to not write your own songs. Cue accusations of being manufactured. I don't get it personally. The Beatles were spectacularly good at it but it doesn't mean everybody else is. Lennon and McCartney had a skill in that department. Not having other people write his songs didn't hurt Frank Sinatra, say.

Anonymous said...

Whoops, best ignore the 'not' in that last sentence.