This collection of twelve discs, edited by musicologist Curt Sachs, was recorded by Parlophone and published by the cultural department of Carl Lindström AG in 1930 in Berlin. It was intended to be the first step in a larger project of collecting and recording old music. When the Nazi party seized power in 1933, Sachs, who was Jewish, had to leave Germany. He fled to France, where he continued the project under the title L’Anthologie sonore. When Sachs moved to the United States in 1937 and started working at New York University, his colleague François Agostini took over the artistic direction of L’Anthologie sonore until 1948, when he passed the project to Felix Raugel. Between 1934 and the mid-1950s, 169 records were published as part of the anthology.

The twelve vinyls of 2000 Jahre Musik auf der Schallplatte were accompanied by a small book with descriptions of each recording, written by Curt Sachs.