For most of the twentieth century Traditional music was a second class citizen of music education in Ireland. But in the present day, commercial viability and growing artistic appreciation both demand that the music now be included meaningfully in curricula at all levels. Today there is much academic activity within the music itself, and Irish and Northern Irish state education policies now include the music as a genre.

Yet there is still a huge absence of intelligent public awareness about it. While people should not be obliged to like the indigenous music of the island, or even to want to know more about it, the hitherto absence of educational facilities around it do prevent informed judgements and choices about its uptake being made. And even where educators have a desire to seek out information, they find that schools and public libraries generally not only have few books, but find it difficult to source them due to short print runs, poor distribution and absence of information. Schools in particular also find it expensive to source concisely-representative recorded music amid the vast range of CD albums available today.

i m u s i c . i e seeks to make available all kinds of information on Irish music - books, résumé and journal articles, albums and web sources. It also intends to make available - by email transfer - important texts that are long out of print, or are presently either unavailable or too expensive for school and college budgets to purchase at antiquarian book rates. A comprehensive CD covering all aspects of the music required by educators is also presently in production