The current Computer Active magazine (issue 624) reports that early recordings (before 1923) are now being made available to listen and download by the Internet Archive. These records are shellac 78s etc. and obviously subject to significant hiss/surface noise etc. They are now copyright free. They can be downloaded in flac and mp3. Their link is www,snipca dot com/40661
This may be of interest to the historians of jazz, blues and music.
(I searched for “Don’t Care Blues” (1920) by Mamie Smith)
I had difficulty playing them (streaming?) in my browser as their servers seemed not to cope.
Downloads (you get multiple copies of the track) are also very slow but be patient - they are 100 years old!