Music Links

		means restricted to York University users through domain name or authentication (see instructions on how to set up a proxy server connection)
Rob van der Bliek Nov 2001		means a link to the holdings of York University Libraries' online catalogue; open access
periodical indexes / references from Duckles / mega music sites / dictionaries and encyclopedias / Canadian music sites / general music information sites / online CD stores / printed music / library specific music pages.

Periodical indexes

The Music Index Online is the largest database, covering 1979-mid 2001, with broad coverage including many popular magazines and journals. It duplicates the paper version held in Scott Reference, which is no longer updated.

Prior to 1979 you'll need to go to the paper version of the Music Index, which began publication in 1949. Beware, though, that coverage can vary by year, meaning that if a periodical is indexed in one volume that doesn't mean it is indexed in all volumes. Use the Music Index Subject Heading List to help focus your search.

RILM Abstracts is a scholarly oriented database covering 1969 to the present. It is more selective (meaning you don't need to look for Billboard or Rolling Stone) with more emphasis on foreign languages. Citations include abstracts.

Note: Because of the duplication in coverage and limited funds, we no longer subscribe to International Index to Music Periodicals.

References from Duckles

The 5th edition of Duckles' Music Reference and Research Materials lists a number of web resources which have been linked by the librarian at the University of Kansas. Go to Electronic Resources in Duckles 5 and scroll down to Internet Music Databases/Projects. But you'll have to get the annotations from the hard copy.

Dictionaries and encyclopedias

York subscribes to the online version of the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the first in a series of Grove music projects and we now have access to the recently released online version of the New Grove II This is the second edition of the most comprehensive and authoritative English language dictionary on music. Many major articles from the 1980 edition have been rewritten by new contributors and there are many new entries on non-western, popular, and jazz music, resulting in over 9000 newly commissioned articles. There are 25 million words with over 29,000 articles, with thousands of cross references. Though sound files are not part of the entries, there are numerous links to sites with sound and other enhancements. Search features include "concept" searching, where terms are linked through a thesaurus, and "pattern" searching, where spelling variants are included.

Encyclopedia Britannica , aside from having a large number of entries related to music, also has a very elaborate and useful subject classification scheme, enhanced with links to recommended and rated sites on the internet. Check out the 1000dictionaries site to get an idea of the great variety, qualitative and topic-wise, of music dictionaries available on the internet.

Mega music sites

Indiana University Music Library: the mother of all music web sites, extensively classified and consistently maintained.

University of Saskatchewan Music Links: excellent Canadian content in addition to the usual suspects.

Sibelius Academy: less classification than Indiana, but more European sites included.

WWW Sites of Interest to Musicologists: Maintained by the American Musicological Society. Although it begins with job listings, there are extensive links to libraries, archives, online journals, associations, composers, and various genres and topics.

Brooklyn College Bibliography and Research Techniques: constructed by Bruce C. MacIntyre, and used by graduate students taking Music 700 at Brooklyn College for locating significant websites in music research.

Canadian music sites

Canadian Music Periodical Index: A database maintained by the Music Division at the National Library of Canada, with over 25,000 entries indexed from 475 Canadian music journals, newsletters and magazines from the late nineteenth century to the present day.

Canadian Music Centre: a distribution centre for scores and some recordings, with online "legit" composer biographies.

Infoguide's list of Canadian music websites: lots of commercial sites, including radio stations, record companies, online zines, etc.

Canadian Music Encyberpedia: an excellent source for information on Canadian popular music, with an emphasis on the independents; written by Jaimie Vernon.

General Music information sites

All Music Guide: offers essays, biographical sketches, and an amazingly large and ramshackle assembly of labels for musical genres.

The Ultimate Band List: not just "bands," but musicians, composers, etc.; large, with many links, although you are exposed to a great deal of advertising.

Songfile is a site that integrates information about recordings and printed music, including mpg samples. You can do keyword searches on lyrics, album titles, performers, and composers and get publication information. The idea is that you then get information about licensing restrictions, since the site is owned and operated by the National Music Publisher's Association.

Online CD stores and information on recordings

Schwann Online is the North American listing of recordings in print. It's a very large database primarily organized around individual song titles.

Andante is a website that specializes in classical music, including news, links, and a database of classical recordings in print provided by RED. It's not as large as Schwann, but it does include items that Schwann does not have.

HMV's site is based on their inhouse search engine MUZE, which allows for searching by release date, format, and department, which, for music, roughly translates into style. It's a Canadian site so prices are quoted in Canadian dollars.

CDNow is probably the largest online CD store with unlimited virtual stock (meaning that they maintain comprehensive lists of in print recordings) and excellent fuzzy search results (meaning you can make mistakes in your typing). This is a very useful site for checking album and song titles, artist biographies and reviews.

CD Universe has similar listings, but the search engine is less sophisticated and there are less links to external reviews.

Record labels on the web: a comprehensive list of independent and a few not-so-independent labels with links to their sites (there are some major omissions).

Printed music

The Music Publisher's Association maintains a site with information on all aspects of music publishing, including copyright (U.S. law) and an extensive alphabetical list of publisher imprints with links to music publishing houses.

Electronic forms of printed music (MIDI, GIFs, PDF, etc.) are also slowly making their way online, although many sites are selling rather than giving away the files (with the exception of the vanity publishers). A good starting point is Free Sheet Music Links, although you'll find that the offerings vary greatly in quality.

Library specific music pages

RISM Online, one of the three R's of music librarianship (the others being RILM and RIPM), the R�pertoire international des sources musicales (International Inventory of Musical Sources) has some scholarly-type databases available online.

LC Classification scheme for music: York uses the Library of Congress classification scheme to classify books and scores. This will not necessarily help you understand why a book has a certain classification number, but it will help you locate an area of interest. The scheme is also available in Scott as Z 663.78 C5 M 1978.

Uniform titles: a detailed explanation of how and why uniform titles are used in music cataloguing, useful for searching items like the "Rite of Spring," which appears in the catalogue in at least four different languages. How do you make sure they all link together? You apply a uniform title.

For the U.S. there is the Music Library Association. In Canada, operating as a branch of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML) there is Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (CAML)

Last updated February 07, 2002

SOUND and MOVING IMAGE Library (SMIL)

Music Links

Online CD stores and information on recordings