This is the first comprehensive survey of the vast new field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR). It describes a number of issues which are peculiar to the language of music - including forms, formats, and dimensions of music - together with the typologies of users and their information needs. To fulfil these needs a number of approaches are discussed, from direct search to information filtering and clustering of music documents.

The emphasis is on tools, techniques, and approaches for content-based MIR, rather than on the systems that implement them. The interested reader can, however, find descriptions of more than 35 systems for music retrieval with links to their Web sites.

Music Accessing and Retrieval can be used as both a guide for beginners who are embarking on research in this relatively new area, and a useful reference for established researchers in this field.