The Digital Archive of Arabic Music in the Age of Streaming

Almost everyone I know who has ever kept a collection of digital music—that is, a folder full of music files on a hard drive—can point to a specific extinction-level event in their life that decimated their carefully curated library to the point of no return. A fried old Windows desktop computer, a melted laptop hard drive, a stolen iPod. As someone who’s accumulated nearly 100,000 digital tracks over the past three decades, each time I heard one of these traumatic tales, I felt the person’s pain. 

The convergence of music production, creation, distribution, exhibition, and presentation enabled by new communications technology has swept through and shaken the music industry like never before. The power seems to have shifted in favour of independent and relatively unknown musicians, along with the much-neglected fans. Music has always been a force capable of cutting across cultures and transcending borders; with a huge push from digital technology, music now zips around the world at the speed of light, bringing musicians, fans, and cultures closer together.

If anything, it's surprising that we're only now hearing about the first digital archive dedicated to independent musicians in Egypt - one of very few in the Arab world. In a region where countries get swept by conflict and cultures are often displaced alongside their people, the lack of proper music documentation is not entirely shocking. You might assume that streaming platforms and social media would ensure music lives on indefinitely. But that assumption falls apart in the face of recent examples like the brief removal of ‘Dammi Falastini’ (‘My Blood is Palestinian’) by Mohammad Assaf from multiple streaming platforms - an incident that sparked outcry among Arab and Palestinian listeners. Today, the original track is still absent from Assaf’s verified Spotify account. If this can happen to a globally recognised song, it's not hard to imagine how independent music - often lacking formal licensing or credits - could vanish entirely in just a few years.

On February 24th, 2025, the Arabic Independent Music Archive (AIMA) officially launched its digital platform at the Goethe Institute in Cairo, marking a significant step toward documenting and preserving the independent music scenes across the Arab world. What started as a graduation project has evolved into a comprehensive online resource that aims to visualise and archive the often-overlooked contributions of independent musicians across the region.The project was conceived by Fady Gerges, a visual artist and researcher whose passion for the independent music scene propelled him to turn his initial academic work into a fully-fledged digital archive. Alongside a team of five researchers and data analysts, AIMA has been in development for over a year, gathering information on hundreds of artists, with the ambition of becoming the first unified database of its kind in the region.

Funded by EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) and the European Union in Egypt, the archive’s initial phase focuses on Egypt's independent music scene, documenting 400 artists spanning a variety of genres, including hip-hop, indie, electronic, and mahraganat. Future expansions will extend the project’s scope to Palestine, Lebanon, and eventually the wider Arab world.

"The study of anthropology and ethnomusicology is an independent project and will benefit the scope as projects and ideas are different from commercial ones," says Fady Gerges, Founder and Designer of AIMA. The platform aims to provide a non-commercial lens through which the region’s diverse musical landscape can be understood and preserved.

Fady Gerges, Founder & Designer of AIMA

While AIMA is one of the few projects of its kind in the region, it is not entirely alone in the mission of preserving Arabic music. A notable example is the Syrian Cassette Archives, an initiative by American-Iraqi musician and producer Mark Gergis, which began as a personal collection of cassette tapes gathered during his travels to Syria before the war. What started as a private passion evolved into a fully digitised archive that highlights the rich, multi-faceted soundscape of pre-war Syria, from wedding Dabke tapes to forgotten pop anthems. The archive not only preserves Syria’s musical heritage but challenges the singular narrative of the country that has dominated since the war began in 2011.Both projects point to a growing awareness of the fragile state of musical memory in the Arab world, whether in the form of dusty cassette tapes or scattered SoundCloud links.

At its core, AIMA is a data-driven interactive platform that maps the independent music scene through artist biographies, discographies, languages, and the cities they call home. The platform not only creates a directory of artists but also visualises the relationships between musicians, their geographies, and their genres.

With data quality at the forefront, the archive's team works to verify and cross-reference all information before it goes live. "We have a huge talent growth, but there needs to be growth in the industry parallel to it," says Ammar Manla Hasan, Data Quality Lead at AIMA. "This database is really important to all independent musicians and creates a connection between music and the industry, where it can create a hub for music journalists, researchers, musicians, and bookers to come together in one place.

" The archive is designed to serve not only music enthusiasts but also industry professionals, journalists and researchers, offering a transparent and data-backed reference point for the independent music landscape. By archiving both active and inactive musicians, AIMA creates a more holistic understanding of how the independent scene has evolved over time.

Looking ahead, the project plans to incorporate generative AI and agentic AI technologies to further automate data collection and visualisation, creating an adaptive platform that grows alongside the music scene it seeks to document.

8With the platform now live at aima.website, AIMA represents a long-overdue initiative to map the region’s musical undercurrents, giving independent artists a place in the larger narrative of Arabic music history.