How to Find Songs on the Internet
A page of helpful tips for finding song lyrics and chords on the internet. In case you don't find what you want here.

Acoustic Guitar Song Collection
Beautifully constructed site currently offers a fine selection of songs by a handful of good writers including Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen.

Acoustic Guitar Transcriptions
Pop-rock oriented on-line book catalogue offers note-for-note transcriptions of everything from Clapton Live and Nirvana's unplugged MTV concert (is it folk yet?) to Croce.

Acoustic Music - Chord/Tab FTP site
This is the mother lode of downloadable files for contemporary acoustic music. Most have chords and lyrics, some have tab. Huge index.

"American Memory" National Digital Library
The mother lode. This Library of Congress archive of American music includes vaudeville, dustbowl songs, cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, Hispano music, over 100 Omaha Indian songs and much more. Information and Real Audio sound clips. Incredible.

Amerikanische Songs
This German scholar is fascinated with 19th Century American popular music and has collected lyrics and midi file melodies for over 70 of them. Beautifully designed site.

Ars Nova Downloads
This site is an excellent resource for teachers, with midi files for many classical tunes and folk songs. You can download a free Mac/Win demo of the Songworks II midi player for free.

Becky Vincent's Campfire Songbook
A Girl Guides of Canada song hoard. Hundreds of songs in practical categories for group leaders including performance tips. Site has lots of other cool materials for kids and camping, almost all P.D. (public domain). Hats off!

Best Lyrics.com
Large collection of lyrics and chords.

Australian Folk Songs New
Over 100 Australian folk songs, including lyrics and MIDI file melodies. Fine work by learned Aussie Mark Gregory. A real specialty site.

Classic Rock Top 500 ()
Our Classic Rock guide counts down her "top 500" classic rock songs. Includes a lot of folkies - Dylan, Neil Young, etc. Most songs have links to lyrics & chords with some tabs.

Cosmic Kitchen - Guitar Chords
Chords and lyrics to dozens of folk and sympatico classic rock. Dylan, The Dead, Neil Young, etc. The casual player's usual suspects.

Cosmos's Songbook
This Yosemite Scouting Jamboree web ring site has lyrics to over 250 campfire-type songs, labeled fast-slow.

Cowpie (COuntry Western Pickers of the Internet)
Song lyrics - a lot of country, but other songwriters too. This alphabetical index page shows a folder for each letter - no ads or site info. For the site frames page go here.

Duble Lyrics
Lyrics to thousands and thousands of songs.

Insurgent Country - Americana Songbook
Find lyrics, chords and a (very) few tabs to songs by literally hundreds of songwriters that have been labelled Americana.

Den's Old Lyrics Page
Lyrics to 100s of oldies from the 50s, 60s & 70s (many pop/rock hits most people would rather forget, from Andy Williams to BTO). Webmaster has 100s more & will e-mail on request. A useful and amusing resource.

Digitrad
On-line database of 100s of traditional songs (plus some contemporary), with lyrics, chords and MIDI. Downloadable versions for Mac and PC. Indispensable, but crashes my Mac (OS 8.5).

el Mariachi.com
Lyrics and sound clips to over 300 boleros, corridos, sones, rancheras, and other songs - plus books on Mexican and Mexican American music.

Dr. Demento
Nobody has collected more sick, outrageous, and just plain funny songs. Is it folk? Who cares. This unofficial site, home of rec.music.dementia, offers copious collection of lyrics.

FolkLib: Lyrics List
This FolkLib page lists indexes of lyric/chord sites and lyric/chord collections as well as a few lyrics pages by artist.

Folksong Index
Over 9000 lyrics and 4000 midi melodies, this may be the largest collection of "Airs, Anthems, Ballads, Canons, Ditties, Folksongs, Hymns and War Songs" on the net - from the U.S., Germany, England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, France and Austria.

Gaelic Song Lyrics
Supplies lyrics to 30 Gaelic tunes - in Gaelic, of course.

G8INA's Irish Music Page
Includes a list of sites as well as a collection of zipped songfiles that you can download.

Harmony Central - On-Line Guitar Archive (OLGA)
Lyrics, chords & tabs in all genres, search by author. A lot of classic stuff by Guthrie, Dylan, Joni Mitchell; fewer songs by newer writers. Chords and tabs vary in quality. Due to legal woes, the site may not last much longer.

Harmony Central: Links to Guitar Archive Sites
Most of the links go to alternative/rock collections, but there is treasure to be found here for the non-purist.

History in Song
A fine, fine reference site with hundreds of song lyrics grouped by periods and activities (railroads, mining) as well as by writer - including Dylan, Guthrie, and more. Collects the work of a Dr. Bus in Mainz, Germany and his students.

Ingeb.org - "Leader in Lieder" Best of the Net
German site has 20,000 titles from 40 countries. Includes lyrics, sheet music and MIDI melodies. Incredible.

Irish Song Lyrics
This Scandanavian afficionado of all things Irish has collected lyrics to over 300 songs.

Irish Tune Book
Indexes tunes by name and supplies GIF files for sheet music of the melody. Contains nearly 1000 tunes (no lyrics).

IWW Homepage (Wobblies)
Here's the homepage for the legendary Industrial Workers of the World organization. Radical and still here. In 7 languages.

KIDiddles
Canadian site has an index of over 800 classic kids song lyrics, mostly P.D. Good links.

Labor Movement
The Mother Lode of labor songs. Pages for IWW songs, Songs of Joe Hill, and much more.

Labor Songs
Need lyrics to "The Internationale," "Joe Hill" or "Help Save the Youth of America"? About twenty great and classic songs have been collected by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Lone Hand Western
Cowboy songs and romanticized history of the Old West can be found at the site of this performing group. Dozens of classics like Old Paint, Billy the Kid, Streets of Laredo. Separate listing for Civil War songs.

Lyrics Dot
Apparently a Russian site... But boasts 85,000 songs by 9,000 bands in all genres. Found Fairport Convention's "Sir Patrick Spens" there...

Lyrics Robot - Song Lyric Search Engine
A unique search engine that allows you to search for lyrics by song title - there's also an index of thousands of artists/bands, mostly non-folk.

Lyrics Time
Someone's favorite site - emailed to me.

Lyrics World
Extensive collection - including Top 40 hits from 1930 on, so it's great for those oldies your parents used to sing to you when you were young. OK, grandparents.

Michael's Kitchen
This guy has uploaded lyrics and chords to a very eclectic mixture of acoustic/rock songs, from Joan Baez to Nirvana. Very cool site.

MP3.com
Top 40 world/folk downloads - from "John Henry," "Fennario" and "Old Paint" by Roger McGuinn to Palestinian tracks by Women of Sodom. More interesting tunes under world/folk and folk/rock. Happy listening.

Music Song Lyrics

Music Lyrics FYI
Interesting site dedicated to the role of words in music, all genres. (02/07)

Public Domain Music
A resource to help people locate public domain songs unhindered by copyright hassles or expenses. Lots of useful info, including a database of 3000 songs. Caveat: Titles only - no lyrics here.

Public Domain Music Best of the Net
Hundreds of songs that are either anonymous (folk songs) or are in the public domain: blues, spirituals, popular songs from 3 centuries arr. by genre & author. A treasure trove of lyrics & MIDI file melodies.

Roger McGuinn's Folk Den
McGuinn has recorded a new folk or traditional song each month since Nov. 1996 expressly for the purpose of extending the folk process via the web. Over 50 songs and lyrics/chords at this page.

Ron's Folk Music Chords & Lyrics
One of the hottest song pages on the net gives chords for songs by Richard Shindell, Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky, Mark Erelli and others. New songs all the time - plus custom orders free! For tricky parts, refer to Ed Dupas's tabs.

Sea Shanties
A fine collection of shanty lyrics - traditional and modern - can be found here.

Sing Out!
All songs printed in the past 47 years are listed by title. You can either buy the back issue or send $3 for a photocopy. Thousands of great songs. Also, their online catalogue of song books includes early reprints and 'Rise Up Singing.'

Single Act's Chords & Lyrics - Folk
This interesting site has collections of lyrics - and some chords by a few dozen of the more popular acoustic artists, mainly 70s oriented. The folk collection seems to be the only section working.

Songs of and about Elizabethan Times
A treasury of 16th century lyrics - many bawdy or drinking songs.

Songs2Play
Very nice, eclectic site includes lyrics to hundreds of songs with chords to some, including special sections on Bob Dylan, Ralph McTell, Tom Paxton, The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel and Cat Stevens. Thanks to this Welsh fan of songwriters.

Steele, Gregory
This fansite has quite a bit of stuff for Cliff Eberhardt, John Gorka, Dan Fogelberg, Lucy Kaplansky, and others. Good taste.

Tab Robot - Guitar Tab Search Engine
Search engine/robot finds tabs for songs - seems to search many large on-line tab collections. And lo and behold, it works!

Temple of Tabs
Lyrics and chords for hundreds of artists are archived here. Most are pop and rock, but lots of folk and folk rock too.

Texas Music Tablature Archive
Fans have transcribed songs by Guy Clark, Steve Earl, Townes Van Zandt, and others.

Tunes.com
Lots of albums and sound clips.

Union Songs Best of the Net - New
Over 100 labor classics - from traditional ballads to contemporary songwriters. Many gems. Includes lyrics and MIDI version of melody for each song. A gold mine from Australia's Mark Gregory.

Ultimate Guitar Archive
Leave it to the Russians to create a huge archive of English language song lyrics and chords on the internet. All genres, but some good chestnuts and a separate section for blues.

Un-Plug!
Guitar tabs in all genres. This link gets you to the acoustic section, which lists new tabs and an alphabetical index to browse.

Whole Note - Online Guitar Community
Site invites membership, but you don't have to sign up to use the search engine here for guitar tabs salvaged from OLGA (OnLine Guitar Archive). Hundreds of artists' tabs.