Abstract
Digital music libraries and collections are growing quickly and are increasingly made available for research. We argue that the use of large data collections will enable a better understanding of music performance and music in general, which will benefit areas such as music search and recommendation, music archiving and indexing, music production and education. However, to achieve these goals it is necessary to develop new musicological research methods, to create and adapt the necessary technological infrastructure, and to find ways of working with legal limitations. Most of the necessary basic technologies exist, but they need to be brought together and applied to musicology. We aim to address these challenges in the Digital Music Lab project, and we feel that with suitable methods and technology Big Music Data can provide new opportunities to musicology.