We are excited to announce the launch of the brand new British Music Collection website.

After a period of listening exercises and beta testing with current and potential users, we have taken on board your input and used it to make some major improvements to the site – thank you. Its brand new look includes a number of new features designed to open the contents of the Collection up to as many people around the world as possible, as they so rightly deserve to be.

The site has had a complete redesign and we hope that you will enjoy its much sleeker look and feel. It is cleaner looking and easier to use, with interesting content pulled closer to the surface making it much more easily discoverable than before,  whether you are searching for something specific, or just browsing.

The Collection is home to countless fascinating stories. It is time to open up curation completely and let these stories be drawn out and heard, from as many different voices as possible. Spotlight articles have been re-launched and are proving very popular - shining a light on many brilliant composers and their works. We continue to use Google Cultural Institute as a platform to highlight the Collection in online exhibition-format – find out about the latest call for a curator here.

Collection data is now completely open and free to use (licensed by the Open Data Institute). If data is your thing (or even if it isn’t…. yet) why not download it and have a poke around into some of the Collection’s darkest corners. If you’re an artist, it’s all yours to do something interesting with. We don’t claim that it’s perfect but we do believe that even the holes in the data have value (whether that is the dip in numbers of pieces written around the time of the two world wars; or the also depressing predictable lack of music composed by women and BME composers…an imbalance we are prioritising addressing as the collection continues to move forward).

Another new addition is integrated links to social media, making it easier to share what you find with the wider world and helping to spread the word about the sounds, music, creators and their stories within.

Our aim is for as many people as possible to explore the site and enjoy what they discover, and to engage with it on whatever level they want to, be that as a contributor, creator, or searching/browsing – or beyond. Sound and Music may be guardians of its contents, but we are committed to opening it up as widely as possible and that includes responding to ideas from any and all of its users. Please contact us with your suggestions, feedback (positive AND negative – it’s all valuable), ideas for projects, proposals for exhibitions or Spotlights - and of course, if you are a creator of sound or music, to add your work.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best wishes,

Harry Cooper

Creative Project Leader, Sound and Music