The United States Library of Congress maintains a “National Recording Registry”. This includes items deemed to have historical or cultural significance and worthy of being preserved. Past entries include famous songs, interviews, oral histories, etc. This year one of the entries going into the registry is the Microsoft 95 startup chime.
Composed by ambient music pioneer Brian Eno, the six-second sound was designed to evoke a sense of welcome, optimism, and progress as users booted up their computers.
Introduced in 1995, Windows 95 marked a significant shift in personal computing by replacing text-based commands with a user-friendly graphical interface. To complement this innovation, Microsoft sought a memorable startup sound and enlisted Eno, who submitted 84 short compositions and Microsoft ultimately settled on this now-famous chime.
In a bit of a corporate kick-in-the-pants, Eno created the chime on a Macintosh computer. He admitted in 2011, "I’ve never used a PC in my life; I don’t like them.”
The full list of 2025 inductees is below:
| Title | Artist/Creator | Year | Type |
| "Aloha 'Oe" | Hawaiian Quintette | 1913 | Single |
| "Happy Trails" | Roy Rogers & Dale Evans | 1952 | Single |
| "Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’" | Charley Pride | 1971 | Single |
| "I Am Woman" | Helen Reddy | 1972 | Single |
| "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" | Elton John | 1973 | Album |
| "Chicago Transit Authority" | Chicago | 1969 | Album |
| "Bitches Brew" | Miles Davis | 1970 | Album |
| "Fly Like an Eagle" | Steve Miller Band | 1976 | Album |
| "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" | Freddy Fender | 1975 | Single |
| "El Rey" | Vicente Fernández | 1971 | Single |
| "Hello Dummy" | Don Rickles | 1968 | Comedy Album |
| "I've Got the Music in Me" | Thelma Houston & Pressure Cooker | 1975 | Album |
| "Back to Black" | Amy Winehouse | 2006 | Album |
| "Tracy Chapman" | Tracy Chapman | 1988 | Album |
| "My Life" | Mary J. Blige | 1994 | Album |
| "My Heart Will Go On" | Celine Dion | 1997 | Single |
| "Minecraft: Volume Alpha" | Daniel Rosenfeld (C418) | 2011 | Album |
| "Hamilton" (Original Cast Album) | Lin-Manuel Miranda & Cast | 2015 | Album |
| Microsoft Windows 95 Startup Sound | Brian Eno | 1995 | Sound Effect |
| "Our American Journey" | Chanticleer | 2002 | Album |
| Nimrod Workman Collection | Various (Field Recordings) | 1973–94 | Collection |
| 1960 World Series Broadcast | Chuck Thompson | 1960 | Broadcast |
The Library defines its National Recording Registry collection as “audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time based on their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage.”
https://www.popsci.com/technology/windows-95-startup-sound-library-of-congress/
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