78rpm Phonograph Records on the Internet Archive

The 78rpm record was the primary format for recorded music from the early 1900s through the mid-1950s. Made of brittle shellac and limited to about four minutes per side, these discs captured the first half-century of recorded sound — from acoustic-era vaudeville to electric-era big band swing.

The Internet Archive's 78rpm collection is one of the largest freely accessible repositories of digitized discs in the world. Thousands of records have been carefully transferred using archival equipment, preserving both the music and the characteristic surface noise of the format.

These recordings are primary sources for musicologists, but they're also a pleasure for casual listeners. There is something irreplaceable about hearing a performance exactly as it was captured — no remastering, no noise reduction — just the music and the medium.