

Ask HN: I have 89,830 sound clips of rare records. What should I do? - kumar303

I collect records. I rarely buy anything blindly by name or label; I like to discover new stuff by listening to it first. I usually do this by spending hours in grimy bins with a record player but I also found that sometimes Ebay sellers post sound clips of their records. Specifically, what I noticed is that sellers are more inclined to make the effort of posting a sound clip if the record is rare -- i.e. you can&#x27;t find a clip elsewhere -- and the record sounds really interesting. It helps them make a sale.<p>So I made an Ebay API spider that gets all the sound clips and record release data. It&#x27;s been running like a dream since 2007 and I currently have 89,830 sound clips of rare records (probably some dupes in there). I used to watch the feed all the time but I kept finding really cool records and was spending a lot of money! I got busy. I had a good test suite so anytime there was a Unicode error or some bug I patched it pretty quick.<p>I steadily accumulated a pretty amazing collection of sound clips seeded by these search terms: soul, funk, reggae, ska, country, breaks, disco, psych, afrobeat, jazz, rocksteady, garage, indie, library (as in library music), new wave, electronic, brazilian, and boogie.<p>I made a frontend for listening to clips all Ajaxy-like and got it working on mobile phones and major browsers. I was sort of happy with it but ran into some database bottlenecks and got busy again so I never launched it. It was too slow to be usable.<p>What should I do? I don&#x27;t really have time or money to finish it out but I&#x27;d like people to use it to discover music. Since the clips are short and will link to music for purchase, either MP3 (if it exists) or original vinyl on Ebay&#x2F;Discogs, there shouldn&#x27;t be any copyright problems. It&#x27;s fair use to promote music for sale with a clip.<p>You can comment here or reach me by email: kumar.mcmillan@gmail.com
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mintplant
Get in touch with the Internet Archive, perhaps?

[http://archive.org/about/contact.php](http://archive.org/about/contact.php)

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kumar303
Cool, thanks for the info! Amazon S3 costs are getting high so it would be
nice to get some relief

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shiftpgdn
What are you spending on S3? I can very nearly guarantee you could get a bare
metal setup from just about anywhere for about 1/10th the cost.

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kumar303
Dammit. After posting, I caught up with the feed of clips and just bought six
records :( It turns up records like this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCC0wgVXNpc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCC0wgVXNpc)
Wat??

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sinwave
mate, I think there is good reason this particular record is rare... :p

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Kiro
What?! That's a damn fine record.

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sinwave
I wasn't feelin' the vocals. Just making fun though - keep rockin' if you
enjoy it.

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brewsterkahle
The Internet Archive can provide a home for the files-- custom UI's would come
from others and could be fun. info@archive.org

-brewster Digital Librarian

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rms
Seed it on the Pirate Bay?

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twobeard
+1 to this. The least work for uploader, the least work for the downloader to
get them all.

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olefoo
You should team up with [http://echonest.com/](http://echonest.com/) they have
the team and the experience and could probably help you do something cool with
it.

Given the seed terms; I'm imagining an infinite dub mix, where you pick and
mutate beats and fade clips into each other. Too bad our legal system makes
such a thing impossible.

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kumar303
Hah. That would last for days on end.

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cyphunk
I second contacting them. They hope to build a more expansive public data base
of song metrics but need the community to help contribute
[http://echoprint.me/data](http://echoprint.me/data) \-- your collection would
add 0.5x the number of tracks. Though probably not the type of stuff people
will be using Over The Air detection for but still, worth while to support
their effort. Considering what you have I would think/hope that they would be
happy to ingest the data with little work required from you. On the other hand
they may tell you due to the antique nature of your collection that they would
rather not "pollute" the DB since OTA detection often comes with false
positive issues.

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jonah
Unrelated but since you're into rare/old/obscure recordings, you might
appreciate the Cylinder Recording collection at UCSB.

[http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/](http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/)

~~~
DrewRWx
As an aside, my university really needs to advertise this more. I first heard
of it in passing in [http://hummingadifferenttune.blogspot.com/2009/03/chimes-
of-...](http://hummingadifferenttune.blogspot.com/2009/03/chimes-of-trinity-
chimes-of-freedom-and.html) .

Not long after that, like all good things, it kept coming up in my general
electives.

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cheesylard
Have you checked to see if they're on [http://what.cd](http://what.cd)
already? It's the de-facto bittorrent tracker for music. It is possible that
many of those clips you have are already on there.

And if not, you could seed them yourself :D

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DrewRWx
I like where your head is at, but come on man, first rule.

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dsirijus
I'm letting him go on this one. :)

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Asparagirl
Give the files to the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), definitely! They'll
host it all for free, and make a collection out of it. E-mail them directly or
contact Jason Scott (@textfiles on Twitter) who manages a preservation group
for them called Archive Team.

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dmourati
Find your favorite DJ and send it to them. DJs are always looking for exotic
sounds to add to their mixes.

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vitno
He is a DJ :P

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Blahah
But is he his own favourite DJ?

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louthy
Every DJ is their own favourite DJ.

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fs111
Donate them to [http://freesound.org/](http://freesound.org/)

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gabemart
Copyright prevents OP from doing so.

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ragatskynet
Sound clips are priceless for music producers if they are in a good format
(320 kbps mp3 or lossless). Well, if they have no license which prohibits
their usage. But music producers are not really "careful" about this, haha.

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mr_timppa
Hi, we are interested in. www.musicinfo.io. Our database is huge and its free
to use.

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mattwritescode
Why not open source and share with the world. You can wack an amount of
advertising on the site and make some nice income. Obviously just be careful
of copyright.

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rodrigocoelho
I'm sending you an email. I know someone at IMMuB (Brazilian Musical Memory
Institute) [1] that will be interested in the Brazilian clips you have.

Thanks for posting!

[1] [http://www.memoriamusical.com.br/](http://www.memoriamusical.com.br/) (in
Portuguese)

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hluska
I collect records too...this sounds incredible, but it would bankrupt me
within twelve months...;)

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judah
I run BitShuva.com and we build custom internet radio stations (think Pandora
clones). If copyright isn't an issue, I'd gladly put a custom radio station up
for you. Shoot me an email, contact@bitshuva.com

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felipelalli
Send to Wikimedia.

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neilk
No, it's better for Archive.org. The Wikimedia Foundation mostly deals with
Creative Commons licensed content.

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the_french
I think it could provide an interesting way for producers to discover unique
and interesting samples to use in their tracks.

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kumar303
It totally would! Licensing is pretty tricky with this sort of thing though.
Oftentimes there's some mogul who owns the rights but they won't budge on a
price. Then if you use the sample anyway and they'll sue you.

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fwenzel
This is not my home turf, but this is beautiful and exciting. Is your ajaxy
frontend in a state worth open sourcing?

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lightyrs
Soundcloud, please.

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splatzone
Bung them up online so DJs can have em

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andrewantar
Put it all up on hearo.fm!

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blahbl4hblahtoo
You should go dancing! No, seriously archive.org that stuff for posterity.

