Technology Slice Blog

Universal Music Donates Music Archive to Library of Congress - In a musical donation without precedent, Universal Music Group has gifted the Library of Congress' Recorded Sound Section with a mother lode of 200,000 master recordings. The masters -- a trove of mono metal parts, lacquers and quarter-inch tape recorded by the Decca, Brunswick, Vocalion and Mercury labels between 1928 and 1948 -- represent the largest single contribution ever received by the library's audio-visual division and the first major collection obtained by the institution. The UMG recordings -- comprising both previously released music and unreleased outtakes -- encompass material by Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, the Dorsey Brothers, the Andrews Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Jimmy Lunce­ford, Louis Jordan, Judy Garland and other crucial American artists. Individual tracks in the collection include such seminal recordings as Crosby's bestselling 1947 version of "Wh...