The AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM) was established on 1 April 2004, supported by a 5-year grant of just under £1m from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

A partnership of Royal Holloway, University of London (host institution) with King's College, London and the University of Sheffield, CHARM's aim was to promote the musicological study of recordings, drawing on a wide range of approaches ranging from computational analysis to business history; click here for further details.

Its activities included a major discographical project , residential symposia and other events, and research projects.

Through this website you can discover more about these activities, access our online discography and library of ex-copyright recordings, see details about our publications, or find information about early recording history and methods for analysing recordings.

CHARM researchers won a further five years of funding from 2009 under the AHRC's Phase 2 Research Centres scheme, but with a new research programme focussing on the musicological study of live performance. This changed focus is reflected in the successor centre's name: the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP).