Research Guides: Online Audio and Video Databases: Home

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Jacey Kepich

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Subjects: Arts & Humanities, Dance, Music, Theater

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Reminder: Online Access

Library resources require going through CWRU Single Sign-On.
The best method is to follow links from the library website.
When logged in and a browser window is not closed, access should continue from resource to resource.
Remember to close your browser when done.

CWRU Libraries Discovery & Authentication
by Anne Trenholme Last Updated Oct 1, 2024 370 views this year

Connect to Our Online Audio Databases

Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Naxos offers the world's largest online classical music library, with streaming access to more than 120,000 CDs of both standard and rare repertoire in all genres. Users can listen to individual tracks, entire CDs, or create custom playlists.
Classical Music Library This link opens in a new window
Streaming audio for over 50,000 recordings across all genres and periods of classical music.
Music Online: Jazz Music Library This link opens in a new window
Explore a comprehensive collection of streaming jazz with thousands of jazz artists, ensembles, albums, and genres.
Music Online: American Music This link opens in a new window
Hear and feel the music from America's past. Includes songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers and cowboys, as well as songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war protests and more.
Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries This link opens in a new window
Smithsonian Global Sound is a virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions. The collection provides access to online resources that support the creation, continuity, and preservation of diverse musical forms.It includes the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of the legendary Folkways Records, Cook, Dyer-Bennet, Fast Folk, Monitor, Paredon and other labels. It also includes music recorded around the African continent by Dr. Hugh Tracey for the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University as well as material collected by recordists on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies.
Database of Recorded American Music (DRAM) This link opens in a new window
A scholarly resource of recordings by American composers and artists, including audio, liner notes, and essays.

Online Audio Databases at CWRU: Introduction

Case Kelvin Smith Library and the Cleveland Institute of Music Robinson Music Library provide access via their subscriptions to a number of streaming audio and video databases. All of these databases allow you to stream audio or video to your computer, but do not allow you to save the audio or video files. In some cases the databases allow you the option of buying the files in question. They are available to the Case and CIM community of users, requiring only that you connect to the CWRU network via CaseWireless, CaseGuest plus VPN software or an Internet provider plus VPN software.

While the majority of the content of these databases is western art music ("classical music"), they also include some jazz, blues, folk music, and world music. Of particular note is Smithsonian Global Sound database which contains a large number of recordings of American folk music, many of them being field recordings.

Each of the databases has its own search engine, but the Naxos Music Library and Alexander Street databases - which include the Classical, Jazz, and American music libraries plus Smithsonian Global Sound - may also be searched using Discovery, the Kelvin Smith Library's meta search engine, which searches across all of the content the library makes available. When searching for audio in Discovery please note that the source type limiter "Electronic Resources" includes online audio, and the source type limiter "Audio" is for physical media, such as CDs housed in the Kulas Music Collection.

Guide updated 6/24/21.