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EnglishHow to Start Making Music with Citizen DJ in Your Browser
Updated
Citizen DJ is a project by Brian Foo, created as part of the 2020 Innovator in Residence Program at the Library of Congress. It lets you explore free-to-use sounds from the Library of Congress, remix and combine them with beats directly in your browser, or download them to use in your own software. To start, open the homepage and select a collection.
Step 1: Pick a Collection
The homepage presents a set of collections, each with two entry points: Explore Remix (work with the sounds in your browser) and Browse & download (get the files for use elsewhere). The collections described on the page are:
| Collection | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Inventing Entertainment | 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and related materials from the Edison Companies |
| Variety Stage | 61 motion pictures (1897–1920 copyrights) covering animal acts, burlesque, dance, comic and dramatic sketches, physical culture acts, and tableaus |
| The Joe Smith Collection | More than 200 interviews with celebrated singers, musicians, and industry icons, donated to the Library in 2012 |
| Free Music Archive | Rights-free music archived by the Library as part of its Web Cultures Web Archive |
| MusicBox Project | A non-profit project founded in 2010 by Dyann Arthur, documenting and preserving musical history |
Thousands of public domain recordings were added in 2022, so the pool of material is larger than the original launch set.
Step 2: Choose Your Path — Remix or Download
Remix in the browser. Select Explore Remix on a collection to combine its sounds with beats without installing anything. This is the fastest way to hear how a sample sits against a rhythm before committing to it.
Browse and download. Select Browse & download to look through the individual sounds and save them for use in your favorite software. This is the better route if you want full control over arrangement, mixing, or effects.
Step 3: Build Something
The project's stated purpose is to invite the public to make music using free-to-use audio and video collections, and to help listeners discover items in the Library's collections they likely would never have known existed. Embedding these materials in hip hop music is the framing the project itself uses, but nothing limits you to that genre — the collections span early motion pictures, vaudeville-era recordings, spoken interviews, and rights-free music.
A practical starting workflow:
- Pick a collection whose source material matches the mood you want (early film audio and variety stage recordings sound very different from the Free Music Archive).
- Use Explore Remix to test a few sounds against a beat.
- Switch to Browse & download for the sounds that worked, and finish the track in your own software.
What to Check Before You Publish
The site describes its sounds as "free-to-use" and notes that thousands of public domain recordings were added in 2022. Public domain status and free-to-use status are not always the same thing, and the collections come from different sources with different histories. Before releasing anything commercially, check the rights information attached to the specific item you used rather than assuming the whole collection carries identical terms.