Music Research Guide

A family of audio and video collections, including: Classical Music Library; Classical Performance in Video, Jazz Music Library; Opera in Video; Dance in Video; American Music; Smithsonian Global Sound; Contemporary World Music; Popular Music Library; Theatre in Video

Classical, world, jazz, and folk recordings, with biographical information, opera synopses and libretti, glossaries and pronunciation guides.

Jazz, blues, R&B, rock, and spoken word from Blue Note, Fantasy, Warner, Naxos Jazz and 150+ record labels.

World music from the catalogues of Smithsonian Folkways, ARC Music, Nonesuch, and other labels.

A collection focused on independent label American recordings (including New World Records and CRI), with liner notes,essays, bibliographies, and discographies

Historic field recordings along with their supporting field notes, photographs, and related interviews.

Films covering every region of the world by documentary filmmakers of the 20th century, including interviews, previously unreleased raw footage, field notes, and study guides.

Contains over 60 field collections from ethnomusicologists, produced in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive.

A collection of classical music videos, including concerts, operas, ballets, documentaries, and artist profiles. Some performances are available as live webcasts and for a limited time through delayed streaming.

Hundreds of productions from the Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD, telecasts from the 1970s-2000s, and radio broadcasts dating back to 1936.

Streaming interviews, documentaries, archived and live concerts.

Streaming video service created by Quincy Jones. It features documentaries, concerts, archives and other content as they relate to “jazz and beyond.”

Links to other audio and video collections

Includes 396 full-length feature films from the Criterion Collection (as of March 5, 2019).

Includes full performances, rehearsal rooms, dressing room, backstage, documentaries and interviews from British theatre.

Covers a wide array of dance styles, including but not limited to: ballet, tap, jazz, African, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance.

Live streaming from Broadway from award-winning writers, directors, and actors.

[Jan. 2024: currently unavailable] Field and commercial recordings of musics world-wide, from the British Library's collections. Most can be played by anyone.

A digital archive of ethnographic field video for use by scholars and instructors. Requires free registration to view video.

Over 10,000 Victor Records recordings made from 1901-1925: jazz, popular music, novelty recordings, opera, political speeches, and sound effects

A streaming collection of documentary films about American folk or roots cultures. Some films are accompanied by transcriptions, essays, and other contextual material.