The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project website is certainly known to many of us here. First of all, I would like to emphasize, that over the past few years I have appreciated this website very much. However, I could not believe my eyes on what I just saw today and I think it's worth an announcement here:

Today, the whole site was turned down for multiple hours. It has now come back online - with a interesting and more questionable change: All the unfiltered .wav files that I appreciated very much are gone, completely vanished! This means, that every cylinder is now only available as a (sometimes not satisfactory) filtered .mp3 file for public download. And no, the .wav files seem to be actually deleted from any publicly available server directory.

So, what is it all about? A new link (Usage Info) leads us to the reason of this intentional restriction - money:

MP3 files of the cylinders available for download are (...) licensed for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Original .wav files (either unedited or restored) can be provided upon request (...). The University of California makes no claims or warranties as to the copyright status of the original recordings and charges a use fee for the use of the transfers. (...)

Fees for music: $5 per second (commercial use), $2.50 per second (non-profit use)
Minimum fee for music: $500

Fees for spoken word: $2 per second (commercial use), $1 per second (non-profit use)
Minimum fee for music: $250


So, it is not only about protection from third-party commercial exploitation but any private individual will be charged AT LEAST $500 for a .wav file of a raw cylinder transfer. This is simply daylight robbery.

As a private collector, I do would not a see problem if the UC Santa Barbara was a private institution, however it is a public research university based on governmental support.
This project is part of the UCSB and as we can read (http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/donate.php), that the cylinder project is mostly based on donations, especially the collection which has grown almost entirely by donations. These donations were made under the given guarantee, that...

You, your family and friends will be able to listen to the online recordings anytime, with the knowledge that these recordings will be preserved for posterity at the UCSB Libraries and that they will contribute to a growing collection of audio that is freely accessible to scholars and the public.

With all honesty, I am not convinced that a donator is satisfied by paying $500+ for an unedited transfer for each one of the musical recordings.

Something that also came to my mind is the statement on the donation page:

It costs the library $60 to catalog, digitize, rehouse, and preserve a single cylinder. Adding another 500 cylinders to the archive and putting them online would cost approximately $20,000.

Assuming, that an archival and online publication comprises to catalog, digitize, rehouse, and preserve a single cylinder, it does not calculate well at all: $20,000/50 cylinders = $40 per cylinder, not $60. That's 50% more than $40.

I should start to sell my public transfers for $450 each, with a monthly bargain offer at $4000 for 10 records.

Of course, no announcement was made about this severe policy change, why would they like anyone to be aware of this?

Concert cylinders sold for around $5US in 1898, about $110US in 2005 dollars. And you think CDs are a rip off!

Their "use fee" is certainly one.

Norman,

That does sound disappointing. I am curious if there's a rational reason behind the change other than a profit motivated one. Has there been theft of recordings for personal gain? Maybe we should contact them directly for a statement on the change to let our membership know what is going on.

Regards,
John

That's really unfortunate. I've spent countless hours listening to cylinders at this site. Since no one will be able to listen to the cylinders without paying, why even bother having the site on-line?

rocky

EdisonSquirrel wrote:That's really unfortunate. I've spent countless hours listening to cylinders at this site. Since no one will be able to listen to the cylinders without paying, why even bother having the site on-line?

rocky

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the issue is that the .wav files were replaced with .mp3 files. (mp3 format is a significant drop in the quality of the .wav format original recording transfer)

So, they are still available to listen to but only via mp3 format, but .wav's can only be purchased at their insane per-second rate.

I suspect that some individuals have been pirating their materials for profit. It has happened to other institutions- on Ebay you can buy discs of material downloaded off the Library of Congress website.

phonophan79 wrote:

EdisonSquirrel wrote:That's really unfortunate. I've spent countless hours listening to cylinders at this site. Since no one will be able to listen to the cylinders without paying, why even bother having the site on-line?

rocky

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the issue is that the .wav files were replaced with .mp3 files. (mp3 format is a significant drop in the quality of the .wav format original recording transfer)

So, they are still available to listen to but only via mp3 format, but .wav's can only be purchased at their insane per-second rate.

That's how it looks to me.
I've only ever used the MP3 files myself, so it makes no difference to me, except it no longer gives me the option to open or save the file before playing it.
In a way, I guess I can't blame them for the new changes.
Whether it costs them $5 or $50 to transfer a cylinder, it's still a cost that they have to cover, and I'm sure many "commercial" organisations have been taking advantage of the sites generosity for years.
I even know of one youtube user who copies files, puts a picture of the artist on screen, then sits back while everyone thanks him for providing such wonderful transfers & preserving history
The guy doesn't even have the decency to give UofC credit for their work, and when I asked about this, my comment was removed & I was promptly blocked!
It kind of makes me wonder what other people do with free UofC files. It wouldn't surprize me if guys like this youtube user made CD's and sold them

I use the site myself, mainly to check if I like a cylinder on ebay before bidding, so I'm one person who's quite happy to listen to free transfers of a slightly lesser quality, and not being able to save the files.

estott wrote:I suspect that some individuals have been pirating their materials for profit. It has happened to other institutions- on Ebay you can buy discs of material downloaded off the Library of Congress website.

Ah, so there ARE CD's being made & sold.

Even if there were CD's sold with their transferred content it had not been any kind of abuse as long as they originated from the unedited .wav files on which they did not claim any kind of further rights. All according to their policy. And this is the new trick: They now only supply those versions where they say that they do hold some rights on them while shutting the unedited versions away.

I certainly do not believe a single second that this will ever prevent a third party to use their files. A YT guy will just use the filtered .mp3 version to upload and even re-issue albums can be easily made from them while 99% of the listeners will not find it out anyway. Most of these people/companies have no sufficient experience in sitting down and carefully restore a digital transfer to audible quality. They had used and likely will use the .mp3 files anyway.

I always enjoyed the raw transfers because I could give it a try on my own with filtering. And I often got a more satisfactory result than the given (filtered) .mp3 version.

This strange term "use fee" is likely a legal trick for justification. They cannot claim copyright on copyleft material. So, they do not charge to give you any rights but just restrict the public access. And they still only transfer a cylinder for you if you leave the record to them. Maybe I am so desperately disappointed because they still present it under the umbrella of common public interest while charging a "use fee" of $500+ for one single transfer.
I probably wasn't that mad if this fee was at a reasonable level to cover their traffic costs (although I doubt that a university really has to struggle with this). But these prices are way beyond the pale or off the scale. With some very few exceptions, I could buy any respective cylinder for that price. And after 7 years of this project it is just so disappointing that they have shut down the most interesting section. And .mp3 is no preservation at all to me.

I've been having rips from my website some years ago by someone who downloaded everything from my site, then removing any reference to my persion and uploading it again at Internet Archive. This here is a good example of one of the few that are left: http://www.archive.org/details/tunon1903

He even ripped RealAudio files and converted them to .mp3 - which did sound awful. So, instead restrictions to everyone and charging $500+ I did get in touch with the staff at Internet Archive and built up there my own collection site - all free and with all the wanted references: http://www.archive.org/details/cylindertransfer
While I always supported filtered files only, anyone is free to download the full quality .flac format which has no lossy compression at all. I have supported radio stations and film directors with my cylinder transfers. They all did ask me if they could use my files and by now I have never denied a request.