Databases List By Format: Audio

The African-American Band Music & Recordings, 1883-1923 collection at the Library of Congress contains stock ensemble arrangements of popular songs written by African Americans, as well as a small selection of historic sound recordings featuring these and similar songs.

Alexander Street provides an online platform for discipline-focused primary source collections, websites, and streaming media aimed at learning and research in a wide variety of fields. Currently accessible content includes over 900,000 albums, 2600 videos, and and nearly 47,000 text documents.

The American Memory project of the Library of Congress National Digital Library Program digitizes distinctive, historical Americana holdings at the Library of Congress, including photographs, full-text manuscripts and rare books, maps, recorded sound and moving pictures. To achieve its goal, this unique public-private program, also works in cooperation with members of the Digital Library Federation and other libraries and archives throughout the United States. For example, digital collections from the LC/Ameritech Digital Library Competition are included.

Audio, video, photographs and other digitized material from the Association for Cultural Equity's Alan Lomax Archive.

Band Music from the Civil War Era, by the Library of Congress, presents examples of brass band music popular in the United States through the latter half of the 19th century. The collection includes printed and manuscript music and sound recordings.

The Digital Archives of the Beethoven-Haus provides online access to the unique collections of the Beethoven-Haus, including music first edition scores, correspondence, and pictures. The collection consists of more than 37,000 scanned 16,00 audio files, and 7,600 text files.

Ludwig van Beethovens Werke is the 1860s edition of Beethoven's complete works, originally published by Breitkopf & Hartel and digitized by the International Music Score Library Project. Some listings include other digitized public domain scores, digitized and audio files (MIDI or recorded performances). Note: this page is updated manually; if a score is not listed, try browsing or searching for it in the left sidebar.

Orchestral and instrumental works by Hector Berlioz, made available online by the Hector Berlioz Website. Works were transcribed with Sibelius, and visitors to the site may listen to MIDI playbacks of the works while viewing the scores. Download of the free Sibelius Scorch plugin is required.

From the Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano, this collection of over 20,000 historical recordings highlights the rich musical heritage of Latin America.

The Broadside Ballads project is a digitized collection of the University of Oxford Bodleian Library's 30,000 broadside ballads, popular songs sold in the streets of Britain from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. Where music notation is available, MIDI sound files have been added to play the notation.

California Gold, by the Library of Congress, is an ethnographic field collection documenting the ethnic and cultural diversity of Northern California made by the WPA California Folk Music Project in the 1930s and 1940s. The collection includes audio recordings and related materials.

Captain Pearl R. Nye: Life on the Ohio and Erie Canal, by the Library of Congress, documents the culture and music of the people who worked and lived along the Ohio and Erie Canal. The collection consists of 75 songs perfomed by Captain Nye and recorded between 1937-1938, as well as transcriptions, lyrics, and related documentation.

The Hoagy Carmichael Collection is a digital collection of Indiana University's extensive materials related to the composer Hoagy Carmichael. Sound recordings, scores and photos, correspondence, and other items are available online.

Chopin's First Editions Online presents a virtual collection of the original impressions of Chopin's first editions. The collection, which currently stands at around 5,500 was compiled from the holdings of more than 20 institutions, including the Bibliotheque National de France, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, and the University of Chicago Library.

The Choral Public Domain Library hosts a large collection of vocal and choral sheet music available for free. The CPDL includes public domain works and scores that are not otherwise commerically viable. In addition to scores for approximately 10,000 works, the library contains texts, translations, and some sound files.

The CMME project is a collaborative initiative to provide access to high-quality digital editions of early music scores. Users can view scores and listen to audio playback.

Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Chant Hymnody presents a selection of digitized materials from the Library of Congress's Ragheb Moftah Collection. Materials include transcriptions, audio recordings, photographs, and other items from Moftah's research into Coptic Christian chant.

The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project provides online access to over 8,000 cylinder recordings held by the University of Santa Barbara's Donald C. Davidson Library. These recordings feature musical and spoken selections from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes ten thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

DRAM is a scholarly resource providing educational communities with on-demand streaming access to CD-quality audio (192kbps Mp4), complete original liner notes and essays from independent record labels and sound archives. The collection contains over 4,000 album's worth of recordings from a distinctive set of 42 independent labels and archives. In addition, it contains a diverse catalogue of American music represented by the New World Records and CRI labels.

Antonin Dvorak: Souborne vydani dila provides online access to the complete works of Dvorak, digitized by the International Music Score Library Project. Some listings include multiple digitized public domain scores, digitized and audio files (MIDI or recorded performances). Note: this page is updated manually; if a score is not listed, try browsing or searching for it using the left sidebar.

Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry, by the Library of Congress, presents a selection of printed materials and sound recordings related to Emile Berliner, who was responsible for many innovations in the development of recording technology. The collection includes correspondence, lectures, scrapbooks, photos, as well as rare sound recordings.

Europeana.eu is about ideas and inspiration. It links you to 50 million digital items from Europe's museums and galleries, archives, libraries, and audio-visual collections. Europeana.eu includes images - paintings, drawings, maps, photos and pictures of museum objects; Texts - books, newspapers, letters, diaries and archival papers; Sounds - music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts; Videos - films, newsreels and TV broadcasts.

Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier, by the Library of Congress, is an ethnographic field collection of traditional fiddle tunes performed by Henry Reed and recorded in 1966-67. The collection includes audio recordings, field notes, and music transcriptions.

The<em> First World War</em> portal makes available invaluable primary sources for the study of the Great War, brought together in four thematic modules. From personal collections and rare printed material to military files, artwork and audio-visual files, content highlights the experiences of soldiers, civilians and governments on both sides of a conflict that shook the world.

Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937-1942, by the Library of Congress, is an ethnographic field collection that documents Florida's cultural and ethnic diversity through audio recordings made under the auspices of the Work Projects Administration in the 1930s and 1940s. The collection includes folk songs, dance music, religious music, and interviews.

Complete free virtual experience programs posted by industry-leading organizations across the world to build valuable career skills and get a taste of industry experience via short, real-world, company-backed online projects

The Glenn Gould Archive by Library and Archives Canada provides online access to materials related to the concert pianist Glenn Gould. Items include searchable databases of published and archival materials, full-text writings by or about the pianist, and digitized images, archival material, and audio tapes.

Hispano Music & Culture from the Northern Rio Grande, by the Library of Congress, is an ethnographic field collection that documents the music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural northern New Mexico and southern Colorado in 1940. The collection consists of sound recordings of hymns, folk drama, wedding songs, and dance tunes, as well as related materials.

The Petrucci Music Library was begun in 2006 by IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) in order to gathering all public domain music scores and the music scores of any contemporary composers who wish to release them to the public free of charge. IMSLP is governed primarily by Canadian copyright law and, therefore, some works may not be public domain in other countries.

Inventing Entertainment, by the Library of Congress, provides access to motion pictures and sound recordings, as well as photographs and articles, related to Thomas Edisons inventions and innovations in recording technology.

This database provides full-text access to selected textbooks across a range of medical education topics as well as related clinical skill simulations, case studies, and audio content.

Franz Liszt: Klavierwerke is a collection of Franz Liszt's piano works, published by Edition Peters in 1913-1917 and digitized by the International Music Score Library Project. Some listings include other digitized public domain scores, digitized and audio files (MIDI or recorded performances).

Franz Liszt: Musikalische Werke is the early 20th-century edition of Franz Liszt's complete works, originally published by Breitkopf & Hartel and digitized by the International Music Score Library Project. Some listings include other digitized public domain scores, digitized and audio files (MIDI or recorded performances).

The Lousiana State Museum Digital Library Jazz Collection provides online access to photographs and audio recordings related to New Orleans Jazz.

Songs and dance tunes from Newfoundland and Cape Breton, collected between 1949-51 by MacEdward Leach. Streaming audio and some notation available.

A comprehensive suite of courses covering the most popular languages in the world.

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdys Werke is the late 19th-century edition of Mendelssohn's complete works, originally published by Breitkopf Hartel and digitized by the International Music Score Library Project. Some listings include other digitized public domain scores, digitized and audio files (MIDI or recorded performances).

A publicly accessible guide to the contents of this unique archive of materials relating to South Slavic oral tradition. Selected materials (texts and audio) are available in digital format.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts Werke is the 1877-1910 edition of Mozart's complete works, originally published by Breitkopf Hartel and digitized by the International Music Score Library Project. Some listings include other digitized public domain scores, digitized and audio files (MIDI or recorded performances). Note: this page is updated manually; if a score is not listed, try browsing or searching for it using the left sidebar.

Music and Performing Arts consists of multiple music and performing arts databases, including American Song, Classical Music Library, Classical Scores Library, Dance in Video, Jazz Music Library, Popular Music Library, Contemporary World Music, and Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries.

This website presents fieldwork and publication materials from Mark Slobin's research in Afghanistan.... Still photography, moving picture clips, and sound clips accompany the written text.

A collection of music recordings from Americans of diverse origins, from Americas past and present. The songs are by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers, and cowboys. They touch topics as varied as Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war protests, and more. And the range of genres includes country, folk, bluegrass, Western, old time, American Indian, blues, gospel, shape note singing, doo-wop, Motown, R&B, soul, funk, and others.

An interdisciplinary collection of streaming audiovisual recordings organized into the following categories: American music, classical, dance, jazz, popular music, contemporary world music, and Smithsonian Global Sound. Music Online includes the Classical Scores Library, a five-volume set of online scores ranging from the Medieval period through the twenty-first century. Thousands of pages of composer biographies and program notes are also available. As of August of 2024, Music Online includes more than 14 million individual tracks of music and nearly 11,000 videos.

Contains 400,000+ pages of the most important classical scores and manuscripts, allowing for the study and analysis of more than 8,000 scores. The collection includes works spanning time periods from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Coverage of score types is comprehensive, with full scores, study scores, piano and vocal scores, and piano reductions. The database has been indexed to enable users to search on musically relevant fields, such as composer, work/opus number, key, genre, instrument, time period; as well as score-specific fields, such as score type, duration, editor, arranger, publisher. These scores are also indexed in the library catalog.

Contains the sounds of all regions from every continent, and genres such as reggae, worldbeat, neo-traditional, world fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing and jazz, traditional music - Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, gagaku, and more. This database is a complementary database to Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries and includes a blend of contemporary and traditional world music recordings.

Part of the larger Music Online: Listening database, the Jazz Music Library features nearly one million jazz tracks from hundreds of labels, including Audiophile, Circle Records, Concord Jazz, Contemporary Records, Fantasy, GHB Records, Good Time Jazz, GRP Records, Impulse, Jazzology, Milestone, Nessa Records, Original Jazz Classics, Pablo, Peak, Prestige, Riverside, Solo Art Records, Stretch Records, and Verve.

A multidisciplinary collection of audiovisual content that touches on the curriculum needs of virtually every department. Music Online: Listening allows students and researchers alike to analyze unique and valuable content from over 500 producers and distributors around the world.

Collection of popular music that contains a wide range of music from around the world, including hundreds of thousands of tracks from major genres in pop music, including alternative, country, Christian, electronic, hip-hop, metal, punk, new age, R&B, reggae, rock, soundtracks and many more.

A virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions. The collection provides a variety of online resources that support the creation, continuity, and preservation of diverse musical forms. The collection includes more than 35,000 individual tracks of music, spoken word, and natural and human-made sounds. Users browse, search, click, and then listen to the music over the Internet through their headphones or speakers. Controlled vocabularies will enable users to browse by musical instrument, geographic area, or cultural group, among other fields.

The Mutopia Project provides access to classical music for free download through digital sheet music editions based on editions in the public domain. The Project also hosts modern editions from composers, editors, and arrangers who have chosen to make their works freely available to the public. MIDI files of some works are also available.

The Naxos Music Library has nearly three million tracks of classical music from hundreds of record labels, including Bridge Records, Cedille, Chandos, Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos, Sony Classical, Vox, and Warner Classical.

The Naxos Music Library Jazz offers a mix of hundreds of jazz and blues labels from around the world, including ACT, Blue Engine Records, Cool & Blue, Manhaton Records, Strut, TCB (the Montreux Jazz Label), and Warner Jazz. NML Jazz currently hosts nearly 300,000 individual tracks (approximately 32,000 albums).

The Nazareth Project presents an official catalog of the works of Ernesto Nazareth. It includes digital transcriptions of the scores and audio files.

Digital edition of The New York Times.

<em>North American Indian Thought and Culture</em> brings together more than 100,000 pages, integrating autobiographies, biographies, Indian publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files. This database is a comprehensive representation of historical events as told by the individuals who lived through them and is an essential resource for all those interested in serious scholarly research into the history of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Canadian First Peoples.

Now What a Time, by the Library of Congress, is a collection consisting of sound recordings of primarly blues and gospel songs made from 1938-1943 in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama.

Omaha Indian Music, by the Library of Congress, documents traditional Omaha music from the 1890s and 1980s. The collection includes sound recordings, photographs, and related materials.

Oscar Peterson: A Jazz Sensation, created by Library and Archives Canada, is devoted to the Canadian jazz artist Oscar Peterson. The site includes a biography and discography, photo gallery, links to digitized memorabilia, the full text of selected articles and essays written by Peterson, and an audio tour of selected recordings. Note: This is an archived site and is no longer being updated.

Patriotic Melodies, by the Library of Congress, tells the stories behind many of the most well known patriotic songs of the United States. The site includes descriptions of each song along with selected sheet music and audio recordings.

The Performing Arts Encyclopedia is a guide to performing arts resources at the Library of Congress. The Encyclopedia provides access to digitized scores, sheet music, audio reordings, films, photographs, and other materials.

Online version of The Pidgeon Audiovisual collection of illustrated talks by architects and related designers. This continuing archive, to which new talks are being added regularly, is a unique library of contemporary attitudes.

Ragtime, by the Library of Congress, presents a selection of sheet music, audio and video recordings, and other materials related to this uniquely American musical phenomenon.

Princeton University's Renaissance Masses, 1440-1520 is an online catalog of polyphonic masses composed in Europe in the 15th-16th centuries. The catalog can be browsed by title, composer, manuscript, or print. The catalog is continuously being updated with the addition of audio recordings for each mass.

Franz Peter Schuberts Werke is the late 19th-century edition of Schubert's complete works, originally published by Breitkopf & Hartel and digitized by the International Music Score Library Project. Some listings include other digitized public domain scores, digitized and audio files (MIDI or recorded performances).

Sheet Music from Canada's Past, a project by Library and Archives Canada and published via Aurora, provides digital access to a selection of sheet music published in Canada before 1921. Selected titles also include audio examples.

The March King: John Philip Sousa presents selected music manuscripts, photographs, printed music, sound recordings, and more from the Sousa Collection at the Library of Congress

Southern Mosaic, by the Library of Congress, is an ethnographic field collection containing nearly 700 sound recordings and other materials documenting a 1939 trip through the southern United States. Recordings include ballas, blues, folk songs, spirituals, and work songs.

MP3s of early wax cylinders recorded by Thomas Edison's recording engineer Theo Wangemann during a trip to Europe in 1889-1890.

The Digital Archive of Popular American Music consists of a selection of materials from UCLA Music Library's Archive of Popular American Music. The Digital Archive includes sheet music and performances of the songs now in the public domain.

Library and Archives Canada's Virtual Gramophone contains information for more than 15,000 78-rmp and cylinder recordings released in Canada or featuring Canadian artists and/or compositions. The database contains images, biographical and historical information, and digital audio reproductions of selected recordings.

Voices from the Dust Bowl, by the Library of Congress, is an ethnographic field collection documenting the everyday life of residents of central Californian migrant work camps in 1940-41. The collection includes audio recordings, photographs, manuscript materials, and related documentation.

Mother Tongue is a rescue initiative for documentation and preservation of endangered Jewish languages. It utilizes audio and visual tools to document speakers from varied Jewish communities, paying special attention to the language and culture of women and of peripheral communities whose voices have remained largely unheard. All the materials are edited and catalogued topically. Where relevant, sociolinguistic data is added.