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Music subject guide
You can locate sound and music recordings using Sofia's Advanced Search function. Use the filters to select Music Recording. You can further restrict to four types of formats:
- Naxos Music Library provides streaming access to over 100,000 recordings including classical, instrumental, jazz, world, folk, and Chinese music.
- Music Online: Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries provides streaming access to the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label. Collection genres include folk, contemporary world music, American folk, spoken word + sounds, and more.
- Music Online: Jazz Music Library is one of the most comprehensive collections of jazz recordings available online covering thousands of artists, ensembles, albums, and genres, from all over the world, from the beginnings of jazz to today.
- Naxos Music Library - Jazz is a comprehensive collections of jazz music that offer close to 20,000 tracks of jazz from over 1,850 albums and more than 500 jazz artists.
- OntheBoards.tv is a streaming database of HD-quality full-length performance films by international, contemporary, and innovative artists working in dance, theater, music, and “other forms that defy categorization”
You may also want to consult the databases at Concordia with music content, including streaming media or unfold the next tab for freely available streaming resources on the open web.
- Centrestreams (Canadian Music Centre)
"Listen for free to thousands of archival recordings by Canadian composers. Search by genre or instrument."
- CBC Music
Free streaming music from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Stream concerts on demand as well as web radio in many different genres. Includes artists pages on thousands of independent artists.
- Free Music Archive
"The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet."
- National Jukebox: Historical Recordings from the Library of Congress
At launch, the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Jukebox content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels, including Columbia, OKeh, and others.
- Last.fm
Last.fm recommends music, videos and concerts based on what you listen to.
- Deezer
Deezer is a free music streaming service based in France.
- SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a streaming music service that allows artists, record labels & other music professionals to send, receive, and distribute music.
- UbuWeb
UbuWeb is a large web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives.
- SONUS
SONUS is a digital music library of electroacoustic works, created and managed by the CEC for the benefit of the greater Electroacoustic / Computer Music / Sound Art community.
- The Hype Machine
A music blog aggregator that tracks hundreds of music blogs and makes songs available for streaming.
- The Freesound Project
The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focuses only on sound, not songs.
- Electroacoustic Repertoire Database
A database created and maintained by The Society for Electro-acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS).
- Play.fm
PLAY.FM is the most comprehensive audio database for DJ and club culture on the internet. More than 12.000 DJ sets, live recordings and radio sessions can be streamed free of charge and on-demand.
- Latin American Electroacoustic Collection
In an effort to preserve, document and disseminate a selection of electroacoustic music created by Latin American composers, an archive has been developed at the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology by Ricardo Dal Farra.
- Squidco
"Squidco sells improvised, composed & unusual music from around the globe. Particular interests are in Free Jazz, Downtown NY Improv Scene, Musique Actuelle, R.I.O. (Rock In Opposition), Avant-Rock & Folk, Unusual Vocal Improv, Avant-Garde and modern compositional music, Electro-Acoustic, Electronic, Experimental, EA-Improv, lower case, Sound & Noise, Field Recordings, World Musics, Historic Recordings, and a great deal inbetween."
- BoomKat
"Our product extends to cover the most underground forms of Electronic music, Hip Hop, Post-Folk, Alt.Country, IDM, Electro, Acoustica, Post-Rock, Ambient, Micro House, Detroit Techno, Mentalism, Electropop, Indiepop, Grime, Free Jazz, Modern Composition, Cologne Techno, Future Disco, Drone, Sublow, Soundtracks, Noise and out and out post-generic objects of wonder."
- Centrediscs
"Unique among recording labels in Canada because it features only works by Canadian composers"
- Electrocd
"...offers the largest selection ... of electroacoustic music recordings in North America"
- Linn Records
"We are an independent record label, combining a love of music with a passion for quality. We cover everything, from award-winning classical and jazz recordings, to the latest rock, pop and electronica."
- Juno Records and Juno Download
"Juno Records is the world's largest dance music store."
- HDtracks
Online music store that specializes in selling high quality, lossless sound files and album liner notes from a wide variety of genres and record labels.
- Discogs
"Discogs is a user-built database containing information on artists, labels, and their recordings. Discogs also incorporates a Marketplace where you can buy and sell the recordings. Discogs is constantly growing as users submit releases to the database."
- Emusic.com
Digital music and audiobook site.
- Beatport
Beatport is an American online music store specializing in electronic dance music and culture.
- iTunes
iTunes is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple.
- Traxsource
Online music store specializing in electronic house music.
- ArkivMusic
An online retailer of classical music, in CD, DVD, SACD, and BluRay formats. Source for hard to find and reissue recordings.
Concordia Library's CD collection consists of nearly 4,000 titles in most genres of music, including classical, jazz, blues, electroacoustic, world, folk, and popular.
You can search the CD collection through Sofia, Concordia's library catalogue.
Concordia Library collection:
Sheet music online:
Hélène Brousseau
Subject Librarian for Cinema, Contemporary Dance, and Music
514-848-2424 ext. 7783
LB-505-01
Webster Library
1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Office hours:
Wednesdays from 2-4 PM at VCR EV 3.703
By appointment
Contact your subject librarian for reference assistance, for library instruction, or to recommend books.
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