由来
Kotone is a listening room for traditional music of Japan and China. Every recording is streamed directly from the library that holds it: the Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons or the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive. We don't copy or re-host the audio.
What we play
Only recordings that are in the public domain or released under a Creative Commons licence. Each track page names its licence, links to the licence text, credits the people the licence asks us to credit, and links back to the original Archive item. Recordings under a NonCommercial licence are played here because the site is free and carries no advertising.
We deliberately leave out digitised 78rpm collections whose rights are disputed, and uploads of commercial albums, whatever licence the uploader attached.
The catalog currently holds 157 recordings:
- Public domain: 54
- CC BY-NC-ND: 35
- CC BY: 24
- CC BY-NC: 13
- CC BY-SA: 12
- CC0 (public domain dedication): 8
- CC BY-ND: 6
- CC BY-NC-SA: 5
Why the metadata looks different from the Archive's
Archive listings are often romanized-only, missing instruments or dates. Every entry here was reviewed by hand: original-script titles where we are confident of them, romanization, an English gloss, instruments and a short note. Where we don't know something, we leave it out rather than guess. If you spot a mistake, please tell us.
Privacy
No accounts, no cookies, no advertising and no cross-site tracking. Your favorites, recently played list and queue are stored only in your own browser. When you press play, your browser fetches the audio from the library that holds it, under that library's own privacy policy.