The Vinyl Archive is a physical and digital media archive dedicated to obscure, little-known, or previously-unknown music that isn't on the internet anywhere else. I am trying to seek out, digitize, archive, research, and share this music to keep the songs and artists from being forgotten. There is no specific focus on genre, style, or geography - if the music has little-to-no footprint in the digital realm, it is relevant to this effort. I started doing amateur archival work in 2022, ripping LPs/45s/cassettes/etc. and putting them on YouTube. As I was broadening the horizons of my music tastes, digging deeper into county-gospel, bluegrass, and generally oddball recordings, I was surprised at how little information existed online about the records I was encountering and trying/failing to learn more about. I didn't see any reason why *I* couldn't put the information online myself, so The Vinyl Archive YouTube page was born. YouTube is a great place to house the audio of these recordings - the videos I've uploaded have connected countless folks over years to music of their past - but YouTube is subpar for organizing the (now quite large) amount of research I have conducted and compiled over the years. So I created this website as a better(?) place to house the accumulated information, images, etc. I don't own the rights to any of these songs; I only take credit for finding the physical records/tapes, doing the research, and sharing the audio. Most of the information I include on the site is compiled from various sources on the internet, but in many cases these artists are little-known and it is difficult to find information about their lives and music careers. If you have more information about any artists, songs, or record labels featured on the site please send me an email and I will update the information. Please get in contact with me if you'd like lossless copies of these songs or if you want to chat about anything related to the site! You can email me at [email protected].
[2026-01-26] I am in the process of uploading the contents of TVA to The Internet Archive. In my opinion this is a more suitable place to house the music long-term. For now, the links on the site will direct to either YouTube or The Internet Archive. You can check out my page on The Internet Archive here.
[2026-01-19] I've finally finished uploading my backlog of LPs that are on my YouTube page! 247 LPs in total - everything added from this point on will be a new addition to the digital world!
[2025-12-16] I'm uploading a steady stream of discs, and I anticipate that will be the case for a while. It will be a long process for me to 'catch up' with everything I've ripped/researched/put on YouTube.
[2025-12-12] The website is live!