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EnglishWhat is Citizen DJ and what can you do on the site?
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 invites the public to make music using free-to-use audio and video collections from the Library of Congress. You can remix and combine sounds with beats directly in your browser, or download the sounds to use in your own music software. The project's stated goal is that by embedding these materials in hip hop music, listeners can discover items in the library's vast collections they likely would never have known existed.
What you can do on Citizen DJ
The site is organized around selecting a collection, then choosing how you want to work with it. Each collection offers two main paths:
- Explore Remix — mix and combine sounds with beats right in your browser.
- Browse & download — download and use sounds with your favorite software.
The collections available
The homepage presents several collections to start from:
| Collection | Type | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| Inventing Entertainment | Music and Spoken word | Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and related materials such as photographs and original magazine articles. |
| Variety Stage Sound Recordings and Motion Pictures | Music and Sketches | 61 motion pictures including animal acts, burlesque, dance, comic sketches, dramatic excerpts, dramatic sketches, physical culture acts, and tableaus, with film copyrights dating from 1897 to 1920. |
| The Joe Smith Collection | Interviews | More than 200 celebrated singers, musicians, and industry icons talking about their lives, music, experiences, and contemporaries. Donated to the Library of Congress by retired music executive Joe Smith in 2012. |
| Free Music Archive | Music | A website devoted to distribution and curation of rights-free music, archived by the Library of Congress as part of its Web Cultures Web Archive. |
| MusicBox Project | Music | Founded in 2010 by Dyann Arthur, an independent folklorist, musicologist, and Berklee College of Music alumni, to document and preserve musical history while advancing music education and creative performance. |
What's new
Thousands of public domain recordings were added in 2022, according to the site. The homepage links to more detail about what has been added.
Who this is for
If you want to make hip hop or other music using public domain and rights-free source material without hunting for samples yourself, Citizen DJ gives you a curated starting point and a browser-based way to try ideas before downloading anything. If you prefer working entirely in your own DAW, the Browse & download path on each collection is the more direct route.