connecting digital music to cultural heritage

June 18, 2014

Digital music has evolved beyond simply distribution. Napster, iTunes, and Spotify transformed our expectations of being able to find and listen to music. On a parallel track, services like Pandora pioneered new ways to find music and the evolution of social networks let us discover music from our friends. There are new services like preamp that let us discover live music in a city or Spotify playlists that let us express ourselves through music, perhaps a natural evolution of the mixtape.

Music also connects us to memory and provide a hook to learning about history and culture. We also have incredible music collections, which are annotated with “meta-data” which can often position the music in place and time, and sometimes provide interesting connections and links.

• Smithsonian Folkways
• Internet Archive Live Music
• Wax Cylinder Collection digitization project

I’ve just started to discover new kinds of collections and interactive stories that create digital cultural heritage connections.

• Austin Music Map
• The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie. New York Times article with embedded music tracks

I’m sure there are more out there and would love to add to these lists… just tweet @ultrasaurus or add a note in the comments.

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