Where do they keep the biggest record collection in the world?

[Saturlight]

I've often heard it quoted that the BBC has the biggest record collection in the world, having every single record the UK has produced. Is this true, and where do they keep them?

I know in the past the record companies sent a copy of every single to the radio stations, but now I suppose they just send it via the Internet, and it's immediately digitally available to be played. I cannot believe any radio station still plays CDs. O-Ha

Are we getting to a stage now where everything will not physically exist, but merely be a digital recording, existing only in amongst circuit boards and wires. !

What ya think.

 

[spiney]

At a guess, only a guess, Library of Congress in Washington dc.

Searching for "BBC gramophone library" turned up this rather worrying link:

-http://missingepisodes.proboards20.com/index.cgi?board=radio&action=display&thread=1154363284

When Saturlight says "not really exist", I'm puzzled, in what way is sound from a CD "less real" than vinyl?

 

[Caned Toad]

Not sure, the British Library I think is the largest in the country:
http://www.bl.uk/nsa
I know the late John Peel, and I think Chris Tarrent have big personal collections.

 

[Saturlight]

When Saturlight says "not really exist", I'm puzzled, in what way is sound from a CD "less real" than vinyl?

I mean that viyal or tape is tangible, whereas digital is invisible in all but sound...

 

[Saturlight]

Not sure, the British Library I think is the largest in the country:
http://www.bl.uk/nsa
I know the late John Peel, and I think Chris Tarrent have big personal collections.

Do you think the British Library is big enough to hold over 110 years of recordings? It's a big building, massive in fact, but is it big enough?

 

[Caned Toad]

Do you think the British Library is big enough to hold over 110 years of recordings? It's a big building, massive in fact, but is it big enough?

Don't know what you are getting at?
I don't know the building so I wouldn't know
Not sure how much they have on vinyl, but they have a lot of stuff, check out the pop collection page.

We try to collect copies of all commercial releases in the UK on all formats - 7 and 12 inch singles, cassettes, LPs, CDs together with new formats as they emerge. Our collection of hundreds of thousands of 78rpm discs covers earlier forms of popular music.

They have lots of info, including links to other collections, but I can't find one which claims to be the biggest....

Edit: Searching for all 'DISC' gives 562140 results, I guess someone has more.

 

[mhku]

I know in the past the record companies sent a copy of every single to the radio stations,

How do you know this? What is your reference that we can validate this comment?

just send it via the Internet

You send nothing by the internet. You might send using email.

 

[Caned Toad]

How do you know this? What is your reference that we can validate this comment?

I think he just means the promotional copies, not a hard and fast rule

You send nothing by the internet. You might send using email.

Erm.... No I think the terminology is valid, email travels over the internet (mostly), it's just a protocol used on it.
I could send a file by email via the internet, I could also send a file by email via my local network...

 

[mhku]

I guess our point of reference differs. To me the term "internet" means www.

The protocol used by www is http. You don't send anything using http- http is a request protocol.

Email is sent using SMTP and received using POP.

Maybe now the term internet is now used to refer to the ftp/ email/ http/ news as a whole? Still doesn't make it technically correct

 

[Caned Toad]

I guess our point of reference differs. To me the term "internet" means www.

The protocol used by www is http. You don't send anything using http- http is a request protocol.

Email is sent using SMTP and received using POP.

Maybe now the term internet is now used to refer to the ftp/ email/ http/ news as a whole? Still doesn't make it technically correct

Well of course we could argue semantics for days (and I often do :-bash )

But no internet != www

The internet is the physical connection of computers and wires and has been around longer than the web, which as you said is the server/client structure based on HTTP, which is 2 layers up from IP, TCP being inbetween.

 

[Caned Toad]

Had to rush that last post, needed to reset before recording something.

Well the protocols are well defined as to what they do, but mixing them into english can produce different ways of saying things. I would say things are sent over HTTP, BitTorrent etc also use HTTP.
So it depends on what context you are talking in. HTTP BTW is not a request protocol, it is a transfer protocol. IP is for the machines to all be connected together, then TCP is the connection protocol so 2 machines can create a virtual link over the internet above IP, then a HTTP connection is established at the application level. For the web, a request is then sent down this connection, the response then comes back down the same connection (headers + web page/image etc) and this connection is usually closed, a new connection being made for every part of the page.

 

[Saturlight]

As regards record companies sending 45s to radio stations, I know this coz my bother worked for Metro Radio in the north east in 1974, and he remembers getting all these promotion copies sent, and he had to sort through them. They looked the same as the record they'd sell in the shops, all except it had promotional copy printed on it.

I suspect now, since all music is played digitally on radio, that record companies wouldn't waste resources sending out CDs, when they can simply use the Internet to send their music, I don't know maybe relay it somehow. It would certainly be cheaper.

 

[Caned Toad]

Well quite off topic, but I remember back years ago, around 1990 that some shops selling CPC games could download them when you asked for them from a repository and put them on the tape for you in the shop rather than keeping all in stock. So 'internet'* distribution is nothing new.

*Actually a direct dial-in

 

[Saturlight]

I am just surprised a worn-out 40-year-old telephone wire can get all this information running through.

What next will they do with that wire?

Send "mail order" brides through it and beam them up through a televisual porthole, through which a window opens, whereby the girls molocules will rush out into a container, then convert from digital back to human DNA and cells.

Codswallop at the moment, but then again, off topic, yes, but who can say what WILL be possible, in twenty years.

 

[spiney]

Saturlight .....

The British Library isn't just that new building by King's Cross station, they also have large storage facilities in other places, i forget where, you'll have to look it up.

They also now have a very interesting electronic data preservation project!

But, I believe the USA library of congress is the world's largest, both printed and sound.

The Internet uses TCP/IP protocols, always! But, this is "encapsulated" in different ways, depending on the link method, eg, dialup, DSL, ethernet, wireless, etc ......

The Web is "added on top" of the Internet, above the TCP, and uses http, for the hypertext links to work (but, you can still use the internet without using the web, eg telnet, etc).

Proprietry data formaqts - eg Bitorrent - are then added on top of the web, that's a "third layer up".

Yes, DSL is "a minor miracle", it's amazing we can get 8MB/s - or higher - down a phoneline supposedly for analogue voice, 300 - 3500 Hz. The catch being, signal attenuation is huge, hence distance is limited.

 

[Saturlight]

Saturlight .....

The British Library isn't just that new building by King's Cross station

Maybe they keep the recordings inside that big bronze statute, like that horse thing from long ago history.

Thanks anyway for the usual fascinating comments and insight. Much appreciated.

 

[Raasay]

If we are talking about the biggest record collection in the world, perhaps it is one of the major record companies? They are not limited to holding the records of just one country, albeit a relatively prolific one.

But if we are talking about the largest music collection in the world, I imagine it could be the "internet" itself, disregarding the semantics of how it travels and is stored...

 

[Channel Hopper]

But if we are talking about the largest music collection in the world, I imagine it could be the "internet" itself, disregarding the semantics of how it travels and is stored...

If you are an Apple employee, it would be data, not music. ;)

 

[spiney]

For understanding communications between computers, as it's now done - with "data objects" - a very useful help is the old-ish OSI 7 layer model. This gives a "very broad overview" - without delving too much into the details of various proprietry formats - giving a "rough-and-ready" idea of what's happening.

A good brief description may be found at:
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/OSI_model .

(far more details are readily available, just Google for them!).

"Open Systems" was a late 1980s intitiative, supported by IBM, DEC (then the world's 2nd biggest computer company!), Sun Microsystems, etc. The 7 layer model was supposed to become an international standard, just like Jpeg, Mpeg, DVB, etc. Ironically, everybody ignored it, and now we've got lots of different proprietry systems instead! Arguably, this is much better, as sticking strictly to OSI would have been too limiting and very clumsy.
However, the "generic" 7 layer model is still an excellent way of understanding what's basically going on!

(As I recall, Dec's VMS directly supported OSI layers 2 and 4 - I think! - but almost no other computer manufacturer provided similar functionality!
The defunct OSI standard has been partially replaced, notably by IEEE ones for computer networking).

PS, that "big bronze statue" thing, outside the new British Library - referred to by Saturlight above - is actually Isaac Newton, but "the version" of him portrayed by William Blake (this representing - supposedly - both arts and sciences!).

http://www.bl.uk/about/stpmap/piazza.html .
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=1122&tabview=image .

Interestingly, Blake's original watercolours are very tiny, the picture on last link just above isn't much smaller than the real thing!

(Rolf, I didn't de-activate above links, but did avoid a direct wiki connection!).

 

[Raasay]

If you are an Apple employee, it would be data, not music. ;)

True. Even if it is now played back on a Pentium.

But carry that to its conclusion, and a vinyl LP wasn't "music" in itself, either. So perhaps "music" can only exist as sound waves, making it very tricky to understand whose collection is the biggest... Perhaps the sounds in the world's oceans?