Streaming Audio
- DRAM This link opens in a new window Streaming access to CD-quality audio, complete original liner notes and essays from independent record labels and sound archives. More than 4,000 albums' worth of recordings from a distinctive set of 42 independent labels and archives are available, with new content being continuously added.
- Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new window Streaming audio, liner notes, and biographical information on composers and performers.
- Naxos Music Library: Jazz This link opens in a new window Thousands of streaming titles from the Fantasy catalogue and Naxos Jazz. Search by album or song title, featured artist(s), or catalog number. Includes album covers and liner notes.
Streamed Jazz Audio
- Association for Cultural Equity Founded by Alan Lomax to explore and preserve the world's expressive traditions and cultural practices. Dedicated to ensuring that children learn about the oral traditions of their families and localities.
- Naxos Music Library: Jazz This link opens in a new window Thousands of streaming titles from the Fantasy catalogue and Naxos Jazz. Search by album or song title, featured artist(s), or catalog number. Includes album covers and liner notes.
- The Free Music Archive (FMA) A library of high-quality, legal audio downloads in many genres - classical to hip hop to experimental - maintained by radio station WFMU, and curated by partner radio stations, museums, music festivals, and record labels. Each mp3 can be downloaded for free, and is pre-cleared for other uses, such as remix projects, production soundtracks, etc. (these permissions vary by track, as determined by the rightsholders).
- Friday Night Jazz with Reuben Jackson features 145 three-hour programs from the popular Vermont Public Radio (VPR) weekly series, with 17 programs selected for online access by the host himself, music critic, poet, and jazz curator Reuben Jackson. Covering the years 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.
- The Jim Cullen Riverwalk Jazz Collection An archive of the Riverwalk Jazz radio program and website, featuring streaming audio of nearly 400 programs broadcast since 1989, with illustrated essays, information about band members and guest artists, complete playlists, supplementary recordings, and stories written by Jim Cullum.
- The Joe Smith Collection at the Library of Congress While president of Capitol Records/EMI in the 1980s, Joe Smith recorded 238 hours of interviews with over 200 musicians, producers, and music executives, documenting oral histories of popular music. Streaming audio of the unedited interviews will be added to this site as the original tapes are digitized.
- Louis Armstrong House Museum The world's largest archives devoted to a single jazz musician: sound recordings, photographs, films, scrapbooks, correspondence and papers, and six trumpets. Search the catalog of the museum for information about its holdings, and to see representative photographs from the collections.
- The National Jukebox Over 10,000 historical 78 rpm sound recordings (as of 5/10/2011), streamed from the Library of Congress' collection of Victor Records Co. discs: jazz and other popular music, opera, political speeches, novelty recordings, and early sound effects. The collection is updated monthly; users can create and share playlists, in addition to browsing through individual recordings.
- The Evolution of Jazz 40 episodes originally broadcast from WGBH from 1953-1954. The series was produced, written, and hosted by Nathan “Nat” Hentoff, a jazz historian, author, music critic, and civil liberties advocate, who went on to be the first non-musician to be named an NEA Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2004
- Smithsonian Jazz The Smithsonian Institution's portal for jazz research, education, and appreciation, with oral histories of jazz artists, links to research collections, jazz education resources, and information about exhibits, events, and performances.
Streaming Video
- Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall This link opens in a new window The Digital Concert Hall is the virtual concert venue of the Berliner Philharmoniker on the Internet. There are more than 30 broadcasts a year, and the site contains an archive of past performances. Note: Only 5 simultaneous users.
- medici.tv This link opens in a new window A classical music digital channel, offering a catalogue of 1,400 programmes in video-on-demand, as well as 100 live concerts each year.
- Met Opera On Demand This link opens in a new window More than 450 Met performances. Dozens of Live in HD productions, classic telecasts from the 1970s, '80s, '90s, and '00s, and hundreds of radio broadcasts dating back to 1936.
- Naxos Video Library This link opens in a new window A performing arts video library with operas, ballets, documentaries, live concerts, and musical tours of historic places.
Folk & Ethno Streamed Audio
- Smithsonian Global Sound This link opens in a new window A virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions, produced in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The collection provides educators, students, and interested listeners with an unprecedented variety of online resources that support the creation, continuity, and preservation of diverse musical forms.
- Association for Cultural Equity Founded by Alan Lomax to explore and preserve the world's expressive traditions and cultural practices. Dedicated to ensuring that children learn about the oral traditions of their families and localities.
- Folk Music in America Dick Spottswood's 15 LP series of recordings and booklets documenting the American folk song and dance between 1890 and 1976.
- Global Music Archive A multimedia archive for traditional and popular music and dance of Africa and the Americas, with particular emphasis on the African Diaspora. Includes audio, video, and bibliography.
- Historic LP Liner Note Booklets (American Folklife Center) Extensive liner notes ranging from 8 to 60 pages per item. Taken from LPs issued from the 1950s through the 1980s by the Library of Congress, from recordings in the Archive of Folk Song/Archive of Folk Culture/American Folklife Center.
- Irish Traditional Music Archive / Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann A reference library and archives for Irish traditional music and dance, including music from the island of Ireland, Irish settlements abroad, and non-Irish performers of Irish traditional music. The Digital Library includes sound recordings, images, and digitized books and scores from the library's collections.
- Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary Digital Collections Includes field recordings of Jewish liturgical music from pre-state Israel and Cochin, India; early twentieth-century sheet music from Russia and Central Europe; and Cantorial School theses.
Accessing Recordings and Videos
Our collection contains DVDs, online streaming videos, CDs, online streaming audio, and LPs. These materials are accessible in OBIS. Search for videos and DVDs in OBIS. Search for CDs, LPs, and streaming audio in OBIS.
The Supplementary LP Recording Catalog contains access to recordings cataloged prior to 1976 not otherwise included in OBIS. The listing includes composers, performers, titles and subjects interfiled. When critical information was included on the backs of cards, the verso was also scanned in the preservation process.
The content of some streaming resources cannot be discovered in OBIS (such as Met Opera On Demand and Smithsonian Global Sound). Available content must be searched directly in the resource.