irishtune.info
Recordings by Decade

The graph below illustrates the age distribution of individual tune recordings in this database. The original recording date of each tune (not the publication or reissue date) is considered here. See the Discography for a full list of my sources. The total number of tune recordings indexed here is 12,262.

One way to interpret this is as an approximate depiction of the historical tides of activity of the recording industry in traditional Irish music. A significant factor to consider, however, is that my data on recordings before the 1990s reflects what has been selected for reissues or anthologies in CD format.

Decade	Number of tune recordings	Bar graph
1900–1909	7
1910–1919	85
1920–1929	294
1930–1939	204
1940–1949	137
1950–1959	374
1960–1969	334
1970–1979	1,756
1980–1989	1,351
1990–1999	4,200
2000–2009	3,473
Undated	47

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