My own Cliff Edwards Project, an attempt to create ukulele songsheets for all the songs Cliff recorded, relied on the Internet Archive for a number of the tracks. The truth is, they are not commercially available anywhere. I own every collection of Cliff's recordings that I know of, but a huge number of those old 78s have *never* been issued in any format since their initial release.

Every fire, house clearance, accident and estate sale sees old music lost, recordings becoming rarer as individual examples are destroyed. If these songs were really so valuable monetarily to the big labels then you'd think they might want to make them available for people to buy, but no. We should cherish and fight for every effort to keep older music alive, for us to enjoy and for future generations. Music matters.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/music-labels-will-regret-coming-for-the-internet-archive-sound-historian-says/

#Music #InternetArchive #Copyright