(10 Oct 2025) Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) has launched the RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines (RAPMM), preserving in a digital format for the first time several valuable, rare, and largely unknown independently published music magazines.
This continuously expanding, fully searchable collection features over 125 magazines and fanzines published from the late 1960s to the present. Taking as its foundation previously uncatalogued print periodicals received from the Stan Getz Library at Berklee College of Music, RAPMM’s scope is broad, with content that highlights the expansive world of punk, rock, indie, hip hop, and country. Containing zines published in Australia, North and South America, Asia, and Europe, it is an international, multilingual research resource that underscores RILM’s broader mission as a UNESCO accredited NGO.
RAPMM’s publications include articles on the history of musical genres and their relation to politics and society, social movements from punk to feminism, subcultures, and stylistic shifts. RAPMM is interdisciplinary in the truest sense, providing great value to researchers in music studies, cultural studies, fashion, political science, literature, gender studies, and beyond.
The zines offer first-hand accounts of journalists, critics, artists, and fans; and some provide feminist perspectives. Readers will also find interviews with widely recognized and fairly unknown artists at different stages of their careers, as well as band profiles, album reviews and charts, and histories of record labels. Far from being detached spectators, the authors, editors, and illustrators featured in RAPMM actively participate in the musical worlds they write about and represent them in artful graphic designs, unique typographies, and photographs.
The press release in full is here.
