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UVic Library Search Help

Tips for using the Library Search interface at the University of Victoria Libraries.

Streaming music with UVic Libraries

UVic Libraries offer several ways for students, faculty, and staff members to stream music. This guide will walk you through the ways to find and access these materials.

Click here to view the video guide to streaming music through UVic Libraries.

Finding music to stream with Library Search

Streamable music in UVic Libraries' collections can easily found using Library Search.

Start by searching for the title of the musical piece or artist you are interested in from the library homepage.Screenshot of the library homepage with the keywords "ali farka toure" entered into the search bar

From your results page, look under the 'Refine your search' menu to the left side of the page. Under 'Content type,' select 'Audio.' You may need to click 'Show more' to reveal this option.Screenshot of the search results page using the keyword 'ali farka toure,' with the cursor hovering over the 'Audio' filter under 'Content type' on the left hand side of the page

Your search results will now only show audio recordings in UVic Libraries' collections. This may include results in CD, LP record, and streaming formats.

To list only music titles which you can stream, click 'Full Text Online' under 'Availability'.

Screenshot of the search results page using the keyword 'ali farka toure,' with the cursor hovering over the 'Full Text Online' filter under 'Availability' on the left hand side of the page. The content filter for "Audio" is already selected.

Clicking 'Available Online' under the title you are interested in will lead to the full record page for the item. From here, clicking on the database title will link to the streaming site and the item itself.

Item record page for the online streaming album, Red & Green by Ali Farka Toure

Music databases

UVic Libraries also offers a variety of specialized databases which you can use to stream music.

American Song
American Song is a history database that contains over 50,000 tracks that allows people to hear and feel the music from America's past. Included in the database are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war protests, and more.

The music comes from Rounder Records, the Smithsonian Institution, Document Records, and other labels and sources. There are fully searchable lyrics where available, beginning with the second release, along with links to Web resources, sheet music, and more.

CentreStreams
CentreStreams provides online streaming access to a catalog of over 8,000 contemporary classical works by Canadian composers available from the Canadian Music Centre. To access this database you will need to set up a User Name and Password at the site.

Classical Music Library
Classical Music Library includes recordings of music written from the earliest times to the present, including contemporary composers.

Contemporary World Music
This database contains important genres such as Reggae, Worldbeat, Neo-traditional, World Fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing and jazz, and other genres such as traditional music - Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, gagaku, and more.

Counterstream Radio
Drawing upon the American Music Center's substantial library of recorded music, Counterstream Radio streams works by a wide variety of American composers such as Elliott Carter, John Cage, Bill Frisell, Kid 606, Abbey Lincoln, Milton Babbitt, Philip Glass, Morton Feldman, Laurie Anderson, and hundreds more.

DRAM (Database of Recorded American Music)
DRAM provides quality audio, complete and original liner notes and essays from New World Records, Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI) and other important labels. Currently, there are over 1,200 CDs (7,500 compositions).

Jazz Music Library
Jazz Music Library is the largest and most comprehensive collection of streaming jazz available online — with thousands of jazz artists, ensembles, albums, and genres.

Music Online
Search all the Alexander Street Press databases at once. You can search individual databases from the "Go to" menu at the top of the page.

Naxos Music
Naxos contains more than 61 000 recordings available as streaming audio 24 hours a day. Along with the Naxos label there are 320 other independent labels included. Genre includes Classical, Jazz, World, Rock and Nostalgia.

RadioOM
RadioOM includes concerts, sound poetry performances, lectures and documentaries in classical music, jazz, experimental music and other forms.

Smithsonian Global Sound
This database 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.

Virtual Grammophone
The Virtual Gramophone is a growing multimedia website devoted to the early days of Canadian recorded sound. With a database of images and digital audio recordings, as well as biographies of musicians and histories of music and recorded sound in Canada, The Virtual Gramophone provides researchers and enthusiasts with a comprehensive look at the 78-rpm era in Canada.

Creative Commons License
This work by The University of Victoria Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise indicated when material has been used from other sources.