Internet Music Sites

This document is focused on web sites useful for music research by anyone from new students to professional music educators, composers, and performers. Most popular sites are not included, partly because of the vast number of such sites and their ephemeral nature. It is also easier to find information on the various forms of popular and country music using standard search engines than it is for classical, jazz or blues sites or specialized music databases.

 
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Table of Contents
Subject Directories        Copyright
Song Lyrics        Internet Databases
Sheet Music        Miscellaneous

 

Dictionaries and Glossaries

 

Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/

All of the terms in the glossary have sound files associated with them so pronunciations can be heard via a QuickTime plug-in, very useful for the many foreign words you find in music. Some also have illustrations, photographs or video examples. Another useful site of this kind is the

Online Glossary http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/glossary/glossary.htm

part of the Essentials of Music site from Sony Music Entertainment. Includes many photographs as well as recorded examples from Sony’s music library to illustrate the musical terms.

Subject Directories

These sites, also known as "pathfinders," contain links to other internet sites. Unlike general interest search engines, the resources listed in subject directories have been organized and evaluated, simplifying a researcher's information search.

General Music Directories

  • Librarian's Index to the Internet: Music   http://lii.org/search/file/music
    Arranged by topic, these sites are reviewed and indexed by librarians.
  • Yahoo! Directory: Music   http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Music
    A well-organized hierarchical subject-oriented guide for the Web and Internet.
  • AMG All Music Guide   http://www.allmusic.com/
    Strongly recommended for its breadth of coverage and excellent cross-references by the review journal CHOICE, this site covers over 307,000 recordings, 1.5 million song titles, 45,000 biographies and 107,000 reviews of music from classical to rap. Artists, musical styles and genres, discographies and numerous links to every kind of music are included.

Classical Music Directories

  • DW3 Classical Music Resources - Duke University   http://www.lib.duke.edu/music/resources/classical_index.html
    Bills itself as the "World's most comprehensive collection of classical music links." Contains accurate, scholarly biographical and historical data on all musicological periods, with a strong search engine.
  • Classical Music Navigator   http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/music/index2.htm
    Organized for the user to find familiar composers and classical types of music. There are five subjects to choose from: Composers, Basic Library of Notable Works, Geographical Roster, Index of Forms and Styles of Music, and Glossary. An excellent site for students.
  • Classical net   http://www.classical.net
    Covers all aspects of classical music through a network of commercial and noncommercial links. Included under general classical are genres and singers, composers, performers, period links, geographical guides to instrumental music, and FAQs. Navigation is easy and direct.

Show Music Directories

  • Musicals.Net   http://musicals.net
    The idea behind this non-commercial website is "To provide the on-line community of musical theatre lovers a place to 'meet' other people, to share information about the shows that they love, and to learn about shows they may come to love!" Generally, the shows that are represented on Musicals.Net tend to be popular Broadway musicals. Links, lyrics, song lists, synopsis, and forums for discussion of particular shows are some of the elements that are available for each show.
  • Musical Heaven, celebrating the musicals of yesterday and today   http://www.musicalheaven.com/
    This site showcases various classes of musical shows including Opera, Movie Musicals, Broadway Musicals, Off-Broadway Musicals & London's West End. Musicals can be browsed by title or subject (General, Classic Musicals, Contemporary Musicals, Revivals), or there is a pretty good site search engine available. There are also links to reviews and fully licensed MIDI files, licensing agents for the shows in case your local theater company wishes to perform one, and a "Musical Mart" where you can find links to purchase recordings, music and other merchandise relating to the musical theater.
  • Internet Broadway database   http://www.ibdb.com/default.asp
    This site is useful for music researchers looking for lists of songs that were performed in the original runs of Broadway musicals. The IBDB (Internet Broadway Database) archive provides records of productions from the beginnings of New York theatre to the present. Created by the Research Department of League of American Theatres and Producers, the national trade association for Broadway, IBDB provides a comprehensive database of shows produced on Broadway, including all "title page" information about each production. Information is derived primarily from theatre programs (in most cases from a production's opening night). Supplemental information is taken from newspaper and magazine reports, theatrical text books, interviews with theatre professionals, and League archives. Easily searchable, the IBDB prides itself on its accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Research Directories

  • Internet resources for music scholars - Edna Kuhn Loeb Music Library of the Harvard College Library   http://hcl.harvard.edu/loebmusic/online-ir-intro.html
    Links to more than 300 scholarly music resources on the Internet. The format is simple: an index page leads to eight other pages, each for a single topic, e.g., scholarly societies, journals, databases, publishers.
  • Worldwide Internet Music Resources - William and Gayle Cook Music Library, Indiana University School of Music   http://www.music.indiana.edu/music_resources/
    Subject directory to Internet resources developed by musical organizations and individuals. Organization is by genres of performers, composers, compositions, and music-related organizations. Other resources include links to publishers, copyright, reviews, and music software; extensive alphabetical listing of both mainstream and specialized publications; and a searchable database of composers, manuscripts, and repertoire. A combinations of popular and scholarly resources.
  • Jewish Music Webcenter   http://www.jmwc.org/
    Lists of organizations, societies, conferences, institutions for studying Jewish music, and online biographies. Research assistance is provided by the article Starting Research in Jewish Music by Judith Shira Pinnolis. Also includes web resources and links to performers, performances, festivals, and reviews of Web sites, CDs, and books.

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Song Lyrics

These can be difficult to find, due to copyright restrictions on more current publications. One strategy for pop songs is to use a search engine to look for an official site of the band, singer or composer of the song you are looking for, since some of these include song lyrics. Using the print collection of a good library may still be the best way to find song lyrics and sheet music.

  • Yahoo! Music - Lyrics
    http://music.yahoo.com/lyrics
    Official versions of lyrics for over 400,000 songs, this is the web's largest legally licensed lyrics database--and it's free.
  • America Singing: 19th Century Songsheets (American Memory Project)   http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amsshtml/
    Not to be confused with sheet music, song sheets are single printed sheets, usually six by eight inches, with lyrics but no music. These were new songs being sung in music halls or new lyrics to familiar songs, like "Yankee Doodle" or "The Last Rose of Summer." Some of America's most beloved tunes were printed as song sheets, including "The Star Spangled Banner" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Song sheets are an early example of a mass medium and today they offer a unique perspective on the political, social, and economic life of the time, especially during the Civil War. Some were dramatic, some were humorous. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress holds 4291 song sheets. Included among these American songs are ninety-seven British song sheets from Dublin and London. The collection spans the period from the turn of the nineteenth century to the 1880s, although a majority of the song sheets were published during the height of the craze, from the 1850s to the 1870s.
  • Folk Music of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and America   http://www.contemplator.com/folk.html
    Folk and traditional music and popular songs (with lyrics), MIDI files, tune information and some history behind the folksongs and ballads can all be found here. Irish, British and American Folk Music are covered. No sheet music, but many links are provided for those who'd like to find some, and also links for those wishing to purchase recordings of the songs.

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Sheet Music

Due to copyright restrictions, most current music is difficult to find on the Internet unless you are looking to purchase. Sheet music sites that deal with historical, public-domain music do exist on the Internet, however. Some can be found on the PD Info webpage http://www.pdinfo.com/.

In addition, here are some excellent sites that give access to digitized images of historic or classical sheet music:

  • The Lester S. Levy sheet music collection - Johns Hopkins University
    http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/
    Valuable for research in American popular culture and other American studies as well as for musicians and music scholars. Indexing the entire Levy collection, it includes 29,000 pieces of American sheet music published between 1780 and 1980. The cover and sheet music for music printed before 1923 may be retrieved and downloaded. A variety of subjects are covered, with a special strength in music written during the War of 1812, WWI and other military conflicts. The music may be browsed or can be searched by 17 searchable fields.
  • Historic American sheet music, 1850-1920   http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/ncdhtml/hasmhome.html
    Another one of several digital sheet music collections in the Library of Congress's American Memory project (The Project's Collection finder is located at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/finder.html). Images of 3,000+ pieces from Duke University's extensive holdings, which cover a wide range of song styles including "bel canto, minstrel songs, protest songs, sentimental songs, patriotic and political songs, plantation songs, spirituals, dance music, songs from vaudeville and musicals, Tin Pan Alley songs, and songs from World War I." All songs are in the public domain. The images are accessed by browsing subject or name indexes or by a keyword search. Subject terms describe content of the song, advertising, and cover illustrations.

    Choral Public Domain Library
    http://www.cpdl.org/
    An award-winning free choral sheet music archive with over 7,000 scores downloadable as pdf files. It also has sound files for some of the titles, including links to other services (one of which allow a user to direct that a particular vocal part be highlighted--an extremely useful rehearsal tool!)

    EveryNote.com
    www.Everynot.com
    Features classical sheet music downloads of over 20,000 popular and hard-to-find music scores of over 1,000 composers. Downloads are in pdf format and available for a reasonable price. Music may be purchased individually, or one- and two-year subscriptions are available for institutions such as libraries and music schools. All sheet music is licensed or in the public domain. The first page of a work is available to view for free. There are even short biographical sketches of each composer.

 

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Copyright

Music copyright is a subject of great concern to musicians. Composers want to know how to copyright their work; scholars and teachers need to know how much can be quoted in a text or copied onto a study CD or tape. These sites are among the best for music copyright information.

  • Worldwide Internet Music Resources: Copyright.   http://www.music.indiana.edu/music_resources/copy.html
    Extensive list of copyright sites linked from the Indiana University School of Music's Worldwide Internet Music Resources list.
  • MLA Copyright for Music Librarians   http://www.lib.jmu.edu/Org/MLA/
    A Comprehensive guide to information on copyright law for music and recordings.
  • Public domain music (aka PDInfo)   http://www.pdinfo.com
    The Web home of the Public Domain Information Project. Stated mission is to teach "how to understand and fully respect legal copyright protection," and offer music that is in the public domain. Provides users with information on how to identify published music in the public domain, and how to confirm a particular work's public domain status. Extremely useful for performers and music arrangers, and anyone else who seeks royalty-free music.
  • ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Performers)   http://ascap.com
    The American Society of Composers, Authors and Performers is a membership trade association of over 145,000 U.S. composers, songwriters and publishers of every kind of music. ASCAP protects the rights of its members by licensing and distributing royalties for the non-dramatic public performances of their copyrighted works. ASCAP's licensees encompass all who want to perform copyrighted music publicly. The Society makes giving and obtaining permission to perform music simple for both creators and users of music.

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Internet Databases

  • The Aria database   http://www.aria-database.com/
    Offers a main index and browse features. Also searchable by aria, composer, opera, role, range, language, voice parts, and accompanying materials, if available (e.g., translations, MIDIs). Entries also include the dramatic setting of the aria, synopsis, sound files if available, aria text, a link to Amazon.com to locate recordings of operas, and a link suggesting sources for obtaining the score. Most of the operas included in this database are mainstream.
  • Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature   http://www.music.indiana.edu/chmtl/
    Combines electronic access to several databases of interest including Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology-Online (http://www.music.indiana.edu/ddm/index.html), and Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum (http://www.music.indiana.edu/tml/start.html), a comprehensive database of music theory treatises.
  • Institute for Music Research   http://imr.utsa.edu/
    Includes CAIRSS (Computer-Assisted Information Retrieval Service System) for Music, a bibliographic database of music research literature in music education, music psychology, music therapy, and music medicine.
  • ACE   http://ascap.com/ace/ace.html
    One service on the ASCAP site is ACE, a database of song titles licensed by ASCAP in the United States. For each title, you can find the names of the songwriters and the names, contact persons, addresses and, in most cases, phone numbers of publishers to contact if you want to use the work. For most of the titles, you'll find some of the artists who have made a commercial recording.
  • Classical Music Search   http://la.znet.com/~iwamura/page2.html
    You'll need speakers and a sound card for this one. When you know a melody and you don't know its title or composer, this melody search engine can help. Using a "keyboard" on the search page, you click the keys to enter a melody (playback lets you hear what you entered). Key is unimportant; the database automatically transposes. The database then searches for the name of the composition and the composer, providing midi files to listen to so that you may make sure you've found the right piece. The database includes more than 1500 classical music melodies, covering many of the famous works of the past three hundred years.

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Miscellaneous Web Sites

There are many useful and excellent websites that don't fall easily into any of the categories above. The sites listed here were suggested by librarian, web commentator and reviewer Marylaine Block in a presentation called Finding Images and Sounds on the Web (http://marylaine.com/images.html) (presented for River Bend Library System , December 4, 2002). Please visit this page for even more fun and useful suggestions!

  • FindSounds   http://www.findsounds.com/
    A free site where you can search the Web for sound effects and musical instrument samples. FindSounds Palette is a software program that lets you search more than one million sounds on the Web and helps you organize and search your own sound collection.
  • Songtitle.Info: Music from TV Commercials   http://www.songtitle.info/
    Useful when your patrons want to know what that music is that is backing up the product on tv commercials.
  • Songfacts - fun facts about your favorite songs   http://www.songfacts.com/
    Song meanings, lyrics and trivia. While there is no actual music here, there is a lot of trivia about songs and performers, along with lists of songs with similar features or history. Games, contests and message boards keep things even more interesting. Search or browse by song title, artist or year, or click on random songfacts.
  • Wedding Song Library   http://www.weddingromance.com/music/index.html
    Very useful in the spring to help people planning for those June weddings. Search by title or artist for specific songs, or browse through the most popular or through categories that suggest songs and music for specific parts of the wedding and reception (interlude, prelude, processional, recessional, cake cutting, first dance, etc .); each title is clickable to the Amazon.com description of the album the song is on, which may sometimes have song clips. Part of the larger ultimatewedding.com domain.
  • The Museum of Musical Instruments   http://www.themomi.org/museum/index2.html
    Interactive exhibitions and collections, on topics like the life and times of Woody Guthrie, music in film, the guitar in the electric age, the ragtime music of Scott Joplin, etc.

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Revisions: June 6, 2007; April 17, 2003; originally compiled August 26, 2002 by Valery King.

Tell us what you think!

Send your comments to the author, Valery King, at valery.king[at]oregonstate.edu

Return to the Music Subject Research Guide, Alphabetical, or Subject index of the Subject Research Guides.