World’s largest physical contemporary music archive – featuring over 90 million tracks – looking for new home

The ARChive Of Contemporary Music is looking for a new, permanent home. The not-for-profit music library holds over 90 million physical tracks, making it the world’s largest physical archive of contemporary music.

ARC is currently based in Hudson Valley but could now be “forced to move at any time,” and is therefore in need of financial support to find a new home for its recordings.

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The library has already moved its location once before. Originally, ARC was based in New York City but was forced to move to Hudson Valley in 2020 due to a rise in rent and lack of space for its vast collection of music.

It was founded in 1985 by B. George and the David Wheeler (1957-1997), and its board of advisors includes Jellybean Benitez, Youssou N’Dour, Q-Tip, Keith Richards, Nile Rodgers, Todd Rundgren, Fred Schneider, Martin Scorsese, Paul Simon and Mike Stoller.

As Billboard reports, George says, “The space we have now is zoned for agricultural storage and not for offices. We could be forced to move at any time. Without a new home, more than three million recordings, as well as millions of historic materials spanning all cultures and races, could disappear forever.”

ARC has already received an anonymous donation of $1 million to fund the move, according to the outlet. George estimates it needs $10 million to relocate, and he would like to stay in the area as “access is important.”

ARC preserves copies of each version of every recording, in all known formats, and has electronically catalogued more than 700,000 sound recordings and digitised 400,000. ARC also houses more than three million pieces of attendant support material including photographs, videos, DVDs, books, magazines, press kits, sheet music, ephemera and memorabilia.

Find out more over at The ARChive Of Contemporary Music.