> My only qualm is in "browse" mode, I wish the clips were slightly longer. Or that holding down the mouse/trackpad kept playing the clip. As of now, and unless I'm doing it wrong, the clips are so short you only get the vaguest sense of their content.

Their processing splits out individual sounds from longer clips, so the purpose is to browse those clips, not the full songs/recordings. Works quite well when you're hunting for things to use as samples in music production.

But regardless of that, once you've selected a clip, you can click "Play in context" to playback the sound together with what's before and after. And for the full song/recording, you can press "View on loc.gov" to play the entire thing.