On January 1st, something historic happened. Every sound recording from the invention of recordings through 1922 was entered into the #publicdomain in the United States.

https://archive.org/details/georgeblood

What was included? Edison reels. 78 rpm records, including 38,500 recordings that the Internet Archive had digitized for preservation, research, and discovery with the help of George Blood, L.P.. 78s were mostly made from shellac, i.e., beetle resin, and were the brittle predecessors to the LP (microgroove) era.

What is really cool is that you can filter by topics and subjects for instance: folk, blues, hillbilly, Hawaiian, tango, ragtime, old time, Csárdás, folk and square dance and more. Here are a couple of samples: