• What’s Included?
• Benefits for Users
• Benefits for Subscribing Institutions
• Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World
• 33 1/3 Series
• Global 33 1/3 Series
• Scholarly Books on Popular Music Studies

From acid house to zydeco, from Acapulco to Zanzibar, Bloomsbury Popular Music provides unrivalled scholarly coverage of modern popular music worldwide, from the early 20th century to the present day.

With its fast-expanding range of exclusive content, Bloomsbury Popular Music is an invaluable resource for students, academics and researchers in disciplines from music, ethnomusicology and the performing arts to media and communication, cultural studies, anthropology and sociology.

• Explore the historical origins and cultural impact of popular music from almost every country in the world
• Discover more about influential artists and albums, and local music scenes and subcultures
• Learn about everything from musical form and instruments to the workings of the music industry
• Research the social, political and economic context of different musical genres

Take a look at the Featured Content highlights to get previews of the resources available.

Bloomsbury Popular Music is available to institutions by annual subscription. New and updated content will be added twice a year, and 30-day free trials are available to institutions.

Register for a free 30-day institutional trial

What’s included?

Bloomsbury Popular Music offers access to a broad and expanding range of content:

• The 14-volume Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World (10 volumes available at launch)
• All 120+ volumes of the 33 1/3 book series, providing in-depth analysis of influential albums
• An expanding range of scholarly books from Bloomsbury’s Popular Music Studies list: 20 titles are available at launch, and at least 5 more will be added each year
• Titles in the new 33 1/3 Global book series, to be added from late 2017 onwards.

Download the title list

Benefits for Users

• Cross-searchable access to high-quality, full-text content covering all genres of popular music from almost every country in the world
• In-depth analysis of key artists and albums
• Search, browse and filter content by music genre, artist name, topic, and country
• Artist Pages containing curated links to relevant content for each artist
• World Map enabling users to navigate to books and articles covering a particular country or region
• Timeline of Popular Music showing dates of all the albums covered in the 33 1/3 series, plus an overview of contextual events in musical and political history, with links to relevant encyclopedia articles
• Related Content links on every content page makes it easy to discover relevant material
• Intuitive, user-friendly interface for desktop, tablet and mobile
• Easy to cite, share, and print content
• Personal Account feature enabling users to save books, chapters or other items to view later; organise saved items into folders; email and export citations; save searches and set up search alerts

Benefits for Subscribing Institutions…

• No limit on the number of simultaneous users
• Access by IP address, proxy server, Shibboleth, WAYFless URL and other standard authentication methods
• Convenient online account management service
• New and updated content added twice a year
• Article-level and book-level DOIs
• Support for outbound OpenURL linking from citations
• COUNTER 4 usage statistics
• MARC records at volume level for all book titles
• Institutional logo displayed on interface
• Promotional materials
• Conforms to accessibility standards for most Level A (Priority 1) and AA (Priority 2) success criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) developed by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C)

Find out more about How to Subscribe, including pricing and access options, and how to register for a free 30-day institutional trial.

Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, over 20 years in the making, is a landmark reference work in its field, edited by John Shepherd, David Horn and Dave Laing. When complete, it will comprise 14 volumes. Contributions are authored by top scholars and experts from around the world, and include extensive discographies and bibliographies.

Part One (2003, edited by John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver and Peter Wicke) includes in-depth scholarly articles on topics such as social phenomena, the industry, broadcasting, copyright, publishing, record labels and recording studios, performance techniques, instruments and musical form.

• Volume 1: Media, Industry & Society,
• Volume 2: Performance and Production

Part Two: Locations (2005, edited by David Horn, Dave Laing and John Shepherd) gives systematic geographic coverage of every continent. Each volume discusses the history, development and current practice of popular music in cities, districts, cross-border regions, nation states and diasporic communities within each region:

• Volume 3: Caribbean and Latin America
• Volume 4: North America
• Volume 5: Asia and Oceania
• Volume 6: Africa and the Middle East
• Volume 7: Europe

Part Three: Genres contain entries on the genres of music that have been or currently are popular in countries and communities all over the world, with discussions of their cultural, historical and geographic origins, and formal musical characteristics. These volumes are organised by geographic regions, as follows:

• Volume 8: North America (2012), edited by David Horn and John Shepherd
• Volume 9: Caribbean and Latin America (2014), edited by David Horn, Heidi Feldman, Mona-Lynn Courteau, Pamela Narbona Jerez and Hettie Malcomson
• Volume 10: Middle East and North Africa, edited by Richard C. Jankowsky (2015)
• Volume 11: Europe, edited by Paolo Prato and David Horn (2017)
• Volume 12, Part One: Africa, Sub-Saharan, edited by Heidi Feldman (forthcoming)
• Volume 12, Part Two: International, edited by David Horn and John Shepherd (forthcoming)
• Volume 13: Asia, & General index, edited by Roy Shuker, David Horn and John Shepherd (forthcoming)

33 1/3 Series

33 1/3 is a series of short books about popular music, focusing on individual albums by artists ranging from James Brown to Celine Dion and from J Dilla to Neutral Milk Hotel. Each album covered in the series occupies a specific place in music history, so each book-length treatment takes an individualized approach. 33 1/3 is widely acclaimed by fans, musicians, and scholars alike.

Global 33 1/3 Series

The Global 33 1/3 Series takes the 33 1/3 format of short, album-based books, and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.

Discover more about 33 1/3:

• Read the blog
• Follow on Twitter @333Books
• Submit a proposal

Scholarly Books on Popular Music Studies

The Bloomsbury Popular Music Studies list consists of an expanding range of scholarly books ranging from edited volumes to biographies to historical overviews, and that span genres, including rock, pop, hip hop, and punk. Titles include and David Boucher’s Dylan and Cohen, James Braxton Peterson’s Hip Hop Headphones and Kevin Dunn’s Global Punk.