If I had 100 million, I would use part of it to purchase the historical
part (1898-1950) of the EMI Music Archives at Hayes, UK . It contains
about a million 78 rpm shellac records made in various parts of the world
by various EMI labels (Gramophone, HMV, Zonophone, etc). Some of these
recordings contain copyrighted musical works, but a lot of it is in public
domain at least in the EU. Most of them will never be published again,
because there is no commercial market for, say, Icelandic or Burmese
records made in the 1920s, so EMI will just sit on them forever unless
someone raises enough money to buy the lot.
The rest of the money would be needed to digitise the recordings and put
them online. I 'll be glad to provide guidance on this, once we get this
far...
Pekka Gronow
Helsinki, Finland