400,000 pre-1923 sound recordings enter the public domain

[Joe Bartl]

Not sure if this has been noted here before but if you are interested in early recordings, you may be interested to learn that upwards of 400,000 pre-1923 sound recordings will be in the public domain on Jan. 1st. You can read about it and sample some of the recordings on the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) site here. Along with rags, classical, vaudeville, and other genres, you can hear, for instance, a 1901 recording of "Arkansas Traveler".

Not sure about how many of these will have mandolin content or where we might be able to find those that do. I expect, though, that we can expect to see some compilations come down the CD or digital music line.

[Jim Garber]

Looks like they are using Google as their search engine and hopefully there are ways to search for specific artists, instruments, genres, etc.