In the late 2010s, RILM initiated a project to create a digital archive of music zines, prompted by an extensive collection loaned from the Berklee College of Music Library, which faced storage limitations. These zines, originating from the punk subculture, are more than just magazines; they are essential primary sources that document underground music scenes, festivals, and the unfiltered voices of musicians and fans, providing valuable insights into cultural movements and themes like feminism, LGBTQ+ visibility, gender non-conformism, censorship, and political criticism. However, many of these zines remain difficult to find and costly to access.
RILM decided to preserve the collection digitally, combining high-quality page images with searchable HTML text. The collection was designed so that researchers can browse issues page by page and search across the collection; it also improves accessibility for users with disabilities. From the beginning, the archive was intended to reflect the international nature of popular music. Beyond the primarily U.S.-based Berklee collection, local zines were licensed from countries including China, Colombia, Spain, and Germany through RILM’s international networks.
One of the project’s biggest challenges was obtaining rights. Many zine authors were unfamiliar with RILM and digital licensing, making it difficult to explain the project before there was an archive to show them. Identifying rights holders could also be complicated. Once permissions were secured, collecting the actual materials presented another challenge–in actuality, licenses were obtained for only about 20 percent of the Berklee collection. Much of the remaining material came directly from authors, who sometimes had to locate copies through their own networks, while other materials were sourced from institutions. The goal was to preserve each issue as completely as possible, including inserts, advertisements, stickers, flexi discs, and other ephemera. Ideally, digital scans were provided at 400 DPI in grayscale or color. But not every surviving copy is pristine, and it was decided to preserve many imperfections rather than erase them. Creases, faded pages, marks, and other signs of aging are part of the history of the zines. Retaining them preserves not only the zine’s information but also something of the experience of encountering it in its original form.
In May 2025, the RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines (RAPMM) launched with more than 125 titles, 2,000 issues, and 100,000 pages of content. The collection spanned genres, countries, languages, and decades, featuring articles, interviews, band profiles, album reviews, and record label histories. Building the archive required more than digitizing the publications. RILM developed new conversion workflows, an editorial viewer, and a user platform capable of combining page images, searchable text, and preservation of the complete issue. The result is a growing digital record of popular music history–one that makes previously obscure publications discoverable and gives researchers and readers access to the firsthand voices of musicians, writers, and fans. As new zines are added each year, RAPMM continues to expand, preserving the diverse stories and communities that have shaped popular music.
