This platform has collected half a million rare records for free download
If you are looking for cult or rare tracks and records on the Internet, you don't have to surf YouTube or search on Spotify and sign up for a paid subscription. You can find and download real masterpieces on this site, and completely free of charge.
Elvis Presley, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and many other famous artists of yesteryear recorded a huge number of records, and getting hold of them now is not easy, and many have become collector's items and cost hundreds and thousands of dollars. Finding vintage recordings made between the early 20th century and the 1960s isn't always easy. You can scour flea markets or search eBay for vintage vinyl, but you won't find many in good condition and for a lot of money. But there is a solution - a platform, where you can find unique tracks from both legendary and little-known artists.
Internet Archive is a non-profit project that has been working on the preservation of works of various types of art for many years. In the music section of the site you will find many unexpected treasures, available for free not only to listen to, but also to download. Thus, almost half a million (exactly 463,752) 78 rpm records were recently posted online with the help of digitization company George Blood LP. All these recordings have been digitized as part of a major great 78 project, according to the website. However, not all tracks uploaded to it are in the public domain. Thus, the site clarifies that some of the content available through the Archive "may be governed by local, national, and/or international laws and regulations, and your use of such content is solely at your own risk".
However, there is nothing stopping you from digging through these digitized records and obtaining them for your own personal use. For example, how about this 1937 collection of Billie Holiday's jazz classics, or Frank Sinatra's 1940 recording of Our Love Affair, or this 1957 version of Elvis' Don't Be Cruel, all with the signature crackle of records of the era? Just go to the Internet Archive and start searching. The search bar allows you to search for authors by year. Once you find your track or video, you can listen to it using the built-in player. If you like the title of the track, you can also download it to your device without any hassle. In the vast majority of cases, you can download a FLAC (lossless compression) or MP3 file by clicking on the small download arrow located next to the title name in the left column.
But that's not all - in addition to music tracks, the platform also has sections with old radio programs, music videos and more than 250 00 live concerts! Want to see rare concert videos of Jefferson Airplane or Talking Heads? It couldn't be easier! Here you will find clips of modern stars and groups, such as Paramore, Lady GaGa, Katy Perry, Maria Carey and many many others. Tempting, isn't it?
The Internet Archive's mission is to preserve cultural heritage in digital form. In addition to audio tracks and music videos, it contains digitized books, newspapers, audio books, movies, software, video games and even web pages (today there are 735 billion of them). As with Wikipedia, anyone can use them and participate in the collection of content. Not all works are freely available. Books, in particular, are the subject of special attention and play. However, books published before 1927 can be downloaded for free. This is a site worth saving to your Favorites.