Tag Archives: digital platforms

by | August 20, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM’s 1.5 millionth record

RILM’s 1.5 millionth record is now online!

The record is titled “The Filipino national anthem” by Adrian De Leon (Journal of popular music studies 35/4 [2023] 4–13; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2023-16951).

Growing up in Toronto’s Filipino Catholic community, the author witnessed firsthand the power of Lemonade–a 2003 SoundClick track by Jeremy Manongdo, better known as Passion, that became an anthem at Couples for Christ camps. Far from just a nostalgic hit, the song represents a unique slice of the Filipino diaspora that resists the flattening of Asian American identity. Passion’s journey from bedroom singer-songwriter to digital icon mirrors the birth of the modern internet. He built momentum first on SoundClick and MySpace before riding the first wave of YouTube stardom following its 2005 debut, showing how early music platforms grew largely on content of racialized creators. The resulting musical repertoire became a touchstone for generations of North American Filipinos, born at the intersection of 2000s youth culture and the dawn of the platform economy.

A performance of Lemonade by Jeremy Passion.

Fan videos of Lemonade.

The effectiveness of Passion’s Lemonade lies in its formal simplicity as a serenade, easily performed on a guitar or ukulele. As a serenade, it addresses an unnamed woman, rooted in Filipino musical traditions influenced by Spanish colonial practices like the harana and kundiman, which involved love songs sung by men outside women’s homes. While contemporaries such as Gabe Bondoc, David Choi, and A.J. Rafael also achieved online popularity with their serenades, none have reached the cult status of Lemonade, which has become emblematic of a vernacular Filipino American national anthem.

A painting depicting harana singers in the Philippines. Image courtesy of Max Adlao.

Lemonade also illustrates the complexities and frictions between Filipino American life and the dominant Northeast Asian American culture, while also showcasing the impact of viral Filipino American performers within the broader Asian American musical landscape. The song’s resonance among Asian American youth in the 2000s underscores its significance in shaping a diverse and multifaceted sonic identity.

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by | June 26, 2026 · 6:00 am

Egret: RILM as service provider

With the development of Egret, RILM expanded its role to become a comprehensive service provider in music research and publishing. Egret serves as RILM’s advanced platform for hosting, editing, and distributing full-text music reference works, offering a range of innovative tools designed to improve accessibility and usability for researchers worldwide. Among its key features is a bilingual English and German interface, along with integrated Google Translate functionality that enables instant translation into more than 100 languages. The platform also includes visual search capabilities, such as the MGG Online Timeline, helping users explore content in an intuitive and interactive way.

Egret also enhances the research experience through traceable browsing history, allowing users to quickly revisit previously viewed material, as well as sortable works lists, bibliographies, discographies, and related reference data. Users can seamlessly switch between original and updated content, ensuring transparency and scholarly accuracy. Additionally, the platform offers extensive cross-referencing tools that connect related material across Egret products, including RILM Music Encyclopedias, DEUMM Online, and the RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines, and provides direct links to relevant resources in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and other databases. Designed for modern accessibility, Egret is fully compatible with mobile and tablet devices and supports sophisticated XML-based data editing and tagging, making it a powerful and flexible environment for digital music scholarship.

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by | June 12, 2026 · 6:00 am

Modernizing RILM’s database infrastructure in the 1990s

The mid-1990s marked a pivotal period of growth and technological transformation for RILM. As the organization continued to expand its coverage of global music scholarship, it also undertook significant efforts to modernize the systems that supported its work. In 1996, with more than 4,700 records already entered into RILM’s database that year, thousands of additional records submitted by national and regional committees were waiting to be processed. Faced with this growing volume of bibliographic data, RILM set an ambitious goal: to produce volume 30 within just ten months while simultaneously transitioning to a new database infrastructure.

Central to this transformation was the development of a new in-house database system based on Paradox 8 for Windows 95, a powerful relational database management platform that allowed users to construct, manage, and query complex datasets with relative ease. Designed to streamline the management of bibliographic records, the new platform promised substantial improvements in processing, editing, and indexing workflows. The system represented a major step forward from previous methods, enabling staff to handle increasing numbers of records with greater efficiency and accuracy. The project was led by RILM’s database designer, Paul D. Petersen, who had developed a basic version of the system that was ready for beta testing as work on volume 30 began. The volume would become the first to be produced using the new database, serving as both a milestone and a proof of concept for the upgraded technology.

An acoustic modem, which transmits and receives data by converting digital signals into sound waves and vice versa, was at one time regularly used in the RILM office.

Volume 31, published in 2000, became the first RILM volume produced entirely in the organization’s new office using a newly implemented Paradox 9 database system running over CUNY’s new NT network. Despite delays, the accomplishment demonstrated not only the success of the technological transition but also RILM’s commitment to adapting its operations to the evolving demands of scholarly communication. The adoption of the Paradox-based system showed how technological innovation played a crucial role in supporting RILM’s mission. By investing in more effective tools for managing bibliographic information, the organization strengthened its ability to document and disseminate music research from around the world.

RILM’S founder Barry S. Brook (in glasses, red shirt, dark jacket) visits with the editorial team in 1992.

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by | June 2, 2026 · 6:00 am

RILM’s first digital platform

From its inception in the mid-1960s, it was clear that a sophisticated set of computer programs would be essential to achieve the goals of the newly established RILM project. Automation was the buzzword of the day, with the American Council of Learned Societies collaborating with New York University’s Institute for Computer Research in the Humanities to integrate it across various sectors. However, when RILM’s founder, Barry S. Brook, presented his programming specifications to the Director of the Institute detailing the need for various fonts, accents, indexing, and features like random inputting and automatic numbering of abstracts, the response was far from optimistic. Despite RILM being set to launch in just six months, Brook was told that developing such a program would take approximately three years.

Core memory array of an IBM S/360 with transistor driver boards. (Image courtesy of Ken Shirriff’s blog)

At the time, Brook was also collaborating on a digital musical analysis program at Queen’s College with Richard Golden, a computer science student whom Brook described as “one of those whiz kids who seemed to have been born inside an IBM 360”. After hearing Brook’s specifications for the RILM platform, Golden spent three days pondering the challenge before presenting Brook with a solution in the form of scribbled diagrams and notes. Although Golden could not finish all the software before the publication of the first RILM issue, he successfully completed the programming for the crucial author and subject indexes. Soon after, a fully functional set of programs was up and running, including a custom-built, oversized keyboard that featured four different fonts, all possible accents, compound letters, foreign symbols, and even musical notation. Given that most keyboards at the time only supported capital letters and a single font, the creation of this keyboard was a remarkable feat. It also allowed for editing to be done directly on the computer screen, eliminating the need to sift through complex codes.

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by | November 25, 2024 · 6:00 am

Performing the imaginary in pop music

In recent years, digital technologies have enabled a blending of the real and imaginary within the broader event sector. Such events have blurred the lines between art, leisure, information, and entertainment, offered in an expanding array of multimedia spectacles. These advancements have enhanced visual presentations, incorporating programming, lighting, projections, special effects, and holograms to create seamless combinations of reality and fantasy. The rise of holographic companies in stage design has allowed audiences to experience performances by deceased musicians such as Tupac Shakur, Maria Callas, Roy Orbison, Teresa Teng, and Whitney Houston. Digital holography has also paved the way for virtual pop stars, including Hatsune Miku from Japan and Luo Tianyi from China. These characters are products of a blend of voice software, idol industry frameworks, and fan-driven creativity, enabling entirely new forms of entertainment and audience engagement.

Promotional material for a Whitney Houston hologram concert.
Luo Tianyi, a virtual pop star from China.
A Tupac Shakur hologram performs a live concert.

Like digital technologies, social media and smartphones are deeply embedded in the environments and material circumstances through which we experience, interpret the world, and connect with others. Rather than external forces acting on us, such tools are integral to our daily lives. Platforms–the systems, processes, and relationships they encompass–have also become increasingly significant in shaping, mediating, and expanding our understanding and experience of popular music. The rise of digital platforms, streaming services, and social media requires a rethinking of the economies and industries of popular music, along with the evolving dynamics between recorded and live music. This is particularly relevant in the context of live performances, where digital technology has played a significant role during a period when live events gained increasing commodity value within the “experience economy”, especially as concert ticket prices skyrocketed and the cost of recorded music formats fell.

This according to “Stages, platforms, streams: The economies and industries of live music after digitalization” by Zhang Qian and Keith Negus (Popular music and society 44/5 [2021] 539–557; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2021-17913).

Below, watch a Maria Callas hologram performance, backed by a live symphony orchestra and a video of a Teresa Teng hologram performance with Jay Chou.

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