Research Guides: Music: Find Music

Streaming Music Collections

There are many music streaming websites that allow you to listen to music for free. While you may not be able to find the exact recording you need, it never hurts to search their catalog.

Online Databases for Recordings

Unlike the websites listed to the left, these databases allow you to search for specific classical and jazz recordings as well as stream them online. The Naxos databases are only available to Whittier College students, faculty, and staff.

National Jukebox
The National Jukebox makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925.

Sheet Music and Lyrics

These are just a few of the numerous archives and digital music collections available through colleges, universities, and non-profit organizations.

19th-Century Sheet Music Printed in California
A virtual library of some 2,700 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852 and 1900, together with related materials such as a San Francisco publisher's catalog of 1872, programs, songsheets, advertisements, and photographs.
Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads
Ballads from the 16th- to the 20th-Century. The Broadside Ballads project makes the digitized copies of the sheets and ballads available to the research community.
ChoralWiki
Access to public domain choral/vocal scores, texts, translations, and other contextual information.
Duke University's Historic American Sheet Music Collection
Provides access to digital images for over 3,000 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.
Lester S. Levy Collection
American music 1780 to 1980. The collection is especially strong in music spawned by military conflicts from the War of 1812 through World War I, and minstrel music is also well represented.
The LiederNet Archive
The LiederNet Archive is a reference archive of texts and translations of art songs and choral works.
Loeb Digital Scores and Libretti
Includes first and early editions and manuscript copies of music from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by J.S. Bach and Bach family members, Mozart, Schubert and other composers, as well as multiple versions of nineteenth century opera scores, seminal works of musical modernism, and music of the Second Viennese School.
The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive
A collection of texts used in Lieder and other classical art songs as well as in many choral works and other types of classical vocal pieces.
The Petrucci Music Library
A searchable database of musical scores in the public domain.
UCLA's Sheet Music Consortium
Provides tools and services that promote access to and use of online sheet music collections by scholars, students, and the general public.
University of Illinois's Opera and Musicals Collection
Full scores from UI's opera and musical collections, stored in the Internet Archive.