The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This may be old news to most of you but, this is a superb website for researching and listening to cylinder records.
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/browse.php
Its a great way to listen to cylinders before actually buying them on Ebay to see if you like them or not. I have not found one yet that is not listed on this website.

Yes, they do have most cylinders I've ever looked up.

One I have never found yet though is the Edison
2 minute Gold Moulded cylinder titled "Fawn Eyes",
Played by the Edison Symphony Orchestra.

I don't have the record number for it handy now.

Fawn Eyes is number is 9873 and YES UCSB has it listed.

Rich Gordon

That's good to know Rich, thanks for posting it!

I could swear that last time I tried to look
up "Fawn Eyes" on UCSB, it was not there at that
time.

Maybe it was rather recently added, like possibly
within the last year or two?

Anyway, thanks for that info!

Chuck

At one time you could download the "raw" version of the song. They stopped doing that unless you pay them now.
The files you can get now are only MP3 quality.

Marc

Yeah that figures....

Yet more good stuff locked behind a PayWall!

Pay the ransom, or live without it....

Indeed...I always wondered why they started to charge to download the wav type files since they already had done the work to create them ,and the records were donated.

I was able to download a small number of the files and was able to make the songs sound much better than the MP3 versions using my cleanup methods.

Marc

Maybe they can use the money ? It takes quite a bit of money just to maintain a site like that (sans ad revenue) let alone the cost of maintaining and digitizing the cylinders. It's a niche sort of undertaking of the sort that could become insolvent very easily.

When they started, they encouraged owners to donate their cylinders to them. They proudly claimed to make their records available to the public and preserve them, giving the impression of an NGO-like project.

A few years later the trap snapped shut and they raised the paywall, with a minimum fee of $250 for spoken word content, and $500 for music, or $1-$5 - per second - whatever brings more:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/licensing.php

Of course, there are costs involved but the way they went is quite a kind of a questionable strategy.

Geez, I didn't even know this... I thought that you could still download files freely. What a bummer. They should really go back to the "free" download setup...Since all those songs are public domain anyway..

Their pricing is ridiculously insane...Just like everything else in California. Noone with half a brain would pay those insane prices.

PS: I've found plenty of cylinders that were not listed on their website...Especially early brown and black wax Edison and Columbia 2 minute cylinders and 5000 Series 4 minute Edison Blue Amberols. Alot are missing from the archives.

:0)

Tony K.

Edison Collector/Restorer