Music (SUBJECT GUIDE): Music Websites

A membership association of more than 480,000 US composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers of every kind of music, owned and run by its members. They protect the rights of ASCAP members by licensing and distributing royalties for the non-dramatic public performances of their copyrighted works.

Broadcast Music, Inc. collects license fees from businesses that use music, which it distributes as royalties to songwriters, composers & music publishers. This is one of a couple of sites you can search to see if something is still under copyright.

HFA is the foremost mechanical licensing, collection, and distribution agency for music publishers in the U.S.

Use this handy guide to help determine if a work first published in the USA is still under copyright or in public domain!

A reference site to help identify public domain songs and public domain music . . . lists of public domain music, royalty free music recordings you can license, and public domain sheet music reprints.

Look here for job postings, audition info, instrument sales, instructional courses, etc.

Use this site to find concerto contest possibilities! Many perusal scores available.

Begun in 1944 by Rodgers & Hammerstein, this organization represents their work and others of their ilk. On the site's homepage, visitors will find sections that include "Shows", "Songs", "Concerts", and "Gallery."

Compiled by R. Michael Fling @ the William & Gayle Cook Music Library, Indiana University's Jacob School of Music.

Has a searchable database by specialty and location. Click on "Find an Appraisal Expert".

Lists most major antiquarian bookdealers in the U.S. Members can be located both by specialty and geographical region

Use to find a listing of possible appraisers for bequests of
original scores, personal papers and even instruments.

To locate appriasers for autographed manuscript materials.

Independent record appraiser contact info.

"An online metronome ideal for quick and easy use while practicing music, this music tool helps with your rhythm as well as tempo selections and it is always available for free to all students of music at metronomeonline.com."

An electronic book describing how to care for CDs and DVDs.

From William J. Zick, this Web site was launched in 2000 as a nonprofit educational venture promoting awareness of African Heritage in Classical Music. It includes links to info about Black History and composers and musicians of African descent. The site also sponsors a blog.

A comprehensive resource for jazz fans and musicians, this site includes lists of articles, columns, CD and book reviews, musician interviews, news releases, and links to other jazz-related resources on the Web.

Allmusic can be used to look up an out-of-print recording, to get our take on a new release, or simply to explore the world of music.

Provides a "digest of arts and cultural journalism in the English-speaking world, with links to stories in more than 200 free access newspapers, magazines, and publications ... Those eager to keep a finger on the pulse of the arts will find this a valuable resource." M. Nilsen, IU, South Bend

Find out how many times a classical piece has been publicly performed in a given year!

The largest classical event finder online. They list over 12,000 upcoming events in classical concerts, opera and dance. They also publish around 200 reviews every month from around the world.

Here visitors can watch and listen to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The archive of performances dates back to 2007, and visitors can read program notes from each performance and also sign up to receive their latest offerings via RSS feed or iTunes. The site has a number of fun surprises, such as "The Complete Symphonies" guide to the symphonies of Beethoven.

CAIRSS is a bibliographic database of music research literature in music education, music psychology, music therapy, and music medicine.

A merged website for CDNOW and Amazon.com, where you can purchase CDs...etc.

A joint venture of Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music and the Office of Research and the University Graduate School. Includes resources on singing in foreign languages, music history research info and more.

An index of classical and opera music used in over 1,000 feature films.

We have compiled information on important classical music composers and their works and arrayed these data in a fashion making it easier for the novice or casual listener to identify additional materials related to the work.

Geared primarily toward collector's of classical recordings, this site is divided into 7 sections: Basic Repertoire List, Classical CD Buying Guide, Recommended Classical CDs, Composer's Works and Data, Reviews and Articles.

Music Dictionary Online's primary purpose is, in the case of non-English words and phrases, to offer translations and, more generally, and where appropriate, to offer explanations and comments about general (non-musical) and specialist (i.e. musical, etc.

The Music Dictionary features The Grove Dictionary of Music Vol II, the trusted music dictionary of musical terms and musicians for over 100 years. The Music Dictionary is free online and Vol II has over 10K music terms and musician bios for your personal and research use.

Dedicated to the study of musical instruments with an emphasis on research and history.

Provides access to films (available in RealPlayer) in five categories: Pianists, Composers, Chamber Music, Virtuosos, and Conductors. It also offers info about each participating musician, including external links.

Special features, program companions, multimedia presentations, and more from the long-running and award-winning PBS series.

Created in 2008, with the purpose of teaching listeners to listen more closely to music. Each month, the site explores a different aspect of listening, using key works of music to illustrate by example and for the basis of discussion. (T. Schime, from CHOICE review.)

Select "Music Collection Online" under "Category" and be led to over 70 links to online scores!

The site consists of five main features:
1. An online bibliography of music and dance bibliographies and reference sources.
2. A wiki devoted to music and dance reference information and resources.
3. A blog devoted to music and dance bibliography and reference.
4. Access to unpublished bibliographies.
5. An experimental Facebook network designed as a forum for interested librarians, scholars, and students.

The digital arts collection of the Library of Congress.

Over 7,300 bibliographies and reference sources, free music-related online journals, and more

This site was developed to provide access to historical sound recordings. The recordings digitized for the project are from labels owned by Sony Entertainment, which has granted the Library a limited no-cost license to use the materials. At present, the collection consists of approximately 10,000 Victor label recordings produced between 1901 and 1925, including repertoire from popular, folk, and operatic idioms.

"New Music USA serves as a portal to invaluable resources that it produces for contemporary musicians and composers as well as their audiences. Overall, it is easy to navigate, well organized, and visually appealing in its simplicity. Highlighted under the section for media are NewMusicBox and Meet the Composer Studio. NewMusicBox, a multimedia publication, offers Counterstream, a streaming radio site for American music; and Online Library, a comprehensive database of works by living American composers." (M. O'Brien, Binghamton University for CHOICE)

The site includes concerts, interviews, news, profiles, reviews, and studio sessions covering various genres of music. A link under "Discover Songs" allows users to identify and listen to music used between stories on NPR.

A list of links to electronic full-text books relating to music (browsing Library of Congress Call Numbers: "M3" to "M1503 .S8 T5").

Commercial site providing practical information relating to buying and selling instruments. Also, lists sources to aid in researching musical instruments.

5-part series of films showcasing composers, pianists, chamber music, virtuosos and conductors. Offers biographies and discographies of each ot he participating musicians, musical examples and external links.

The New York Public Library's performing arts collection online.

Allows users to click on a note on the keyboard and hear the pitch!

Use this site to identify classical tunes/motives. It's a bit complex to navigate but should be very useful to trained musicians!

Provides excellent information on disposing of a collection, including tips on selling a collection and a guide to finding the value of 78s.

The online presentation of the Aaron Copland Collection at the Library of Congress comprises both manuscript and printed music, personal and business correspondence, diaries, writings, scrapbooks, programs, newspaper and magazine clippings...etc.

A free online resource that helps direct people interested in Beethoven to books, articles, scores, and other sources on the composer. Although it functions primarily as a catalog of the collections of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, its also serves the broader purpose of providing a comprehensive and fully-indexed bibliography of materials relating to Beethoven, from a wide range of subject areas.

"Located on the fourth floor of Mitchell Memorial Library on the Mississippi State University campus,the Museum showcases a collection of musical instruments, recordings, and sheet music amassed over four decades by Starkville businessman Charles H. Templeton, Sr. Many of the 200 musical instruments, 22,000 pieces of sheet music, and 13,000 recordings that Templeton donated to MSU in 1987 are on display in the Museum. "

An online resource of about 5,500 digital images uniting all of the first impressions of Chopin's first editions, thereby providing direct access to musicians and musicologists to some of the most important primary source materials relevant to the composer's music.

Officially begun in 2004 with funding from the U.K.'s Arts and Humanities Research Council, this database's mission is "to help researchers locate valuable primary source materials relevant to their research, and to assist librarians with determining priorities for collection development and preservation." It provides descriptions of concert programme collections held by leading libraries, archives and museums in the UK and Ireland ..."

This presentation explores some of the earliest music transcriptions by explorers, missionaries, and scholars in Egypt, highlighting Moftah's efforts to notate, record, and preserve all Coptic Orthodox hymns.

To mark the bicentennial of the birth of composer Felix Mendelssohn on February 3, 2009, LC's Music Division, one of the world’s major repositories of primary source material related to the composer, is making available here on its Web site digital images of selected resources from its holdings.

Hosted by Brigham Young University, this database points to about 2,300 music archives. If you enter at keyword search "composer*" it retrieves 395 archives.

In Mozart’s Words provides multilingual access to an annotated version of the voluminous correspondence of Mozart and his family - approximately 1,400 letters - that will progressively be made available online on this website. The website offers i) a database of all references to people, places and musical works contained in the letters, facilitating the systematic search of all cited occurrences, and (see next screen)

A digitized select portion of the 400,000+ items in the music division's Leonard Bernstein Collection, including correspondence, program scripts, photographs, etc..

Use this link to learn the "standardized" forms of composer names, musical compositions, subject headings for music-related subject headings.

The Performing Arts Encyclopedia (PAE) is a guide to performing arts resources at the Library of Congress. The PAE provides information about the Library's unsurpassed collections of scores, sheet music, audio recordings, films, photographs, etc.

Preeminent music research collection that includes books, scores, and recordings; a world music archive; the world's largest collection of Turkish and Indian classical music; and extensive Mozart archives.

Books, bound periodicals, and scores in the library are arranged on the shelf in broad subject areas based on a system called the Library of Congress (LC) Classification.

The Music Treasures Consortium provides online access to the world's most valued music manuscripts and print materials, held at the most renowned music archives, in order to further research and scholarship. Researchers can search or browse materials, access metadata about each item, and view digital images of the treasure via each custodial archive's Web site.

An outlet for historical information which will eventually cover from the earliest concerts thru 1970. Currently, the site focuses on 1943-1970, and includes over 3,220 programs, 1,365 scores, 4,200+ imagest, and some 330 business documents.

This guide"provides a basis for beginning electronic research on a wide variety of topics in music, including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, composition, and performance practice. It collects links to archival collections, online scores and sound recordings; article indexes, discographies and bibliographies; scholarly societies; musical reference works; and a miscellany of useful websites."

This application is a cross-index of data for over 38,000 opera and oratorio premieres. Originally compiled by Richard Parrillo, entries include works that received a public performance between the years 1589-1995.

Martin Scorsese recently produced a successful 7-film series about the blues. This PBS site offers detailed informatino about each film, including director info and a complete list of performers featured. It also includes director interviews.

The main goal of the Polish Society for Electroacoustic Music (PSeME) is a promotion of Polish electroacoustic art (electronic music, video art, sound installation, audiovisual and interactive art) abroad, inside the network of festivals, concert series and all other electroacoustic art projects coordinated by the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music (CIME/ICEM) in Bourges (supported by UNESCO). Includes a playlist of streaming audios files.

This database offers around 700,000 mainly manuscript sources catalogued in detail according to academic criteria. The manuscripts are currently stored in hundreds of libraries and archives around the world. A variety of search fields makes it possible to investigate not only according to particular composers, work titles or performance forces, but also by place and time of origin or various people like librettists, previous owners, and dedicatees.

A "central portal for music and musicology, allows you to access an extensive digital library containing the latest scholarly research and online resources. Using a single search engine you can find bibliographical data, full text data, and information about experts in musicology. ViFaMusik is “work in progress” and is continuously being extended."

Over 14,000 biographies of violin and bow makers, including prices that their violins and bows have sold for

Look here for death dates of musicians!

Links to personal catalogs and contact information for members of WAC

This is the "open" (i.e., free!) version of WorldCat. It provides the ability to search the WorldCat catalog and by inputting your zip code, you can locate items in libraries closest to your home!

Sponsored by AMS, a "revamped, expanded version of Worldwide Internet Music Resources." Sites grouped under 32 categories, including "Opera and Song," "Theory," Jazz," "Music by Women," etc. An excellent gateway to scholarly music resource