A-Z Databases: Bloomsbury Popular Music

This digital library for global popular music brings together scholarship and interactive tools for research and learning. It is an ideal resource for students and academics across disciplines including music, ethnomusicology, the performing arts, media and communication, cultural studies, anthropology and sociology.

1. Click the link below and you will be prompted to enter your Microsoft sign in. 
2. You will need to sign in using your UWS e-mail address.

Bloomsbury Publishing (2019) Introducing Bloomsbury Popular Music. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWiWGQuoGqk (Accessed: 22 February 2022).

• To find biographies of popular music artists
• To find chapters and articles from electronic books on music, including the series 33 1/3
• To find articles from music reference books
• To access an illustrated timeline of popular music

On the home page, there is an image link which will take you to the featured content for the current Country in Focus.

At the bottom of the home page there is a link for the current Artist in focus, and on the right, there is a link to the Featured Content Archive.

Basic Keyword Search

In the Search box on the home page, you can search by keywords related to countries, artists and music genres. From the search results screen you can then 'refine' your search results with the following options:

• Place
• Artist
• Time period (decade)
• Music genre
• Music topic
• Content type including artist pages, 33 1/3 books and encyclopedia articles.

Advanced Search

The advanced search option allows you to limt your search by:

• Field, including title, author, creator, abstract
• Year
• Content type including artist pages, 33 1/3 books and encyclopedia articles.

Enter additional search terms using ‘Add Field’ with search functions of ‘AND,’ ‘OR,’ and ‘NOT’ and the same options listed above.

Individuals can create a personal account using the Sign-Up function to save content and searches in folders.

1. Click the pink ‘Sign in’ link in the top right-hand corner of the home page
2. At the bottom of the pop-up window, select ‘Sign up now.’
3. You can now save searches and content to folders.
4. To save a search, click the ‘Save this Search’ button from any search results page, which appears on the top right side of the page.
5. Access folders from ‘My Content’ under the welcome message in the top right corner of the site.

This database features an illustrated Timeline of Popular Music back to 1900, including dates of 33 1/3 series albums, plus an overview of events in musical and political history, with links to relevant articles. You can select this from the home page.

An Interactive World Map enables users to navigate to books and articles covering a particular country or region that is most relevant to their work. You can select this from the home page.

Accessibility Statement

This work in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.