Citizen DJ

The Joe Smith Collection

More than 25 years ago, retired music executive Joe Smith accomplished a Herculean feat—he got more than 200 celebrated singers, musicians and industry icons to talk about their lives, music, experiences and contemporaries. In 2012 Smith donated this treasure trove of unedited sound recordings to the nation's library.

View this collection on the Library of Congress website

Download files in bulk

A set of 4474 audio samples have been automatically generated from this collection for use in your favorite music production software. It contains 378 audio segments and 4096 one-shot audio clips, ideal for use in samplers.

Rights & access

The sound recordings in this collection are free to use and reuse with proper attribution to the copyright owner, Joe Smith. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the works, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission, as long as you clearly give proper attribution.

Why is this free to use?

Joe Smith, the copyright holder of this collection, donated the recordings to the Library of Congress and agreed to make the material free to use and reuse with proper attribution. Citizen DJ excluded interviews that contained performances of songs that were still in copyright.

Suggested credit line

Citizen DJ Project, Joe Smith Collection at the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

Browse & preview files

Click the files below to preview the audio segments: