CDAEM makes a rigorous conservation work and at the same time introduces the necessary technological innovation to respond to the challenge of digitalisation and accessibility sought after by the users of the 21st century. We offer on-site and online services to our users (researchers, art professionals, educators and general citizens).

The CDAEM was created with the merger between the Centre for Theatre Documentation and the Centre for Music and Dance Documentation, both belonging to the INAEM.

To discuss the origins of the Centre for Music and Dance Documentation (CDMYD), we must go back to 1978 and the creation of the National Centre for Musical Documentation under its first director, Antonio Iglesias.

In 1985, with Jacinto Torres at the helm and under the name Centre for Musical Documentation, it came under auspices of the State Secretariat for Culture through the INAEM. In 1991, Antonio Álvarez Cañibano took over the centre that five years later would be renamed as the Centre for Music and Dance documentation with the incorporation the dance section.
During this time, its work focused on the creation of  a series of databases, among them Recursos Musicales en España, Estrenos de Música en España, Recursos de la Danza, BIME and Bibliografía Musical Española.
Through these, the CDMYD prepared secondary documents such as indices, repertoires and catalogues to facilitate access to resources for users.

The CNMYD also contributed to the recovery of a wealth of resources for the study of Spanish music with books like the facsimile edition of Baltasar Saldoni’s Diccionario de efemérides (Dictionary of Ephemeris), Historia de la Música en España (The History of Music in Spain), and Manuscrito Novena (The Novena Manuscript) as well as a number of other publication in collaboration with other institutions. The CDMYD has collaborated regularly with important institutions within the field of musical information and documentation, both nationally in the case of the Spanish Musical Documentation Society (AEDOM) and internationally, as a member of the International Association of Music Information Centres (IAMIC) and the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML).

Some of its other noteworthy publications include El Quijote y la Música (The Quixote and Music), La música en tiempos de la Constitución de Cádiz (Music during the Constitution of Cádiz), the Pasos yearbooks, registers of Dance activities in Spain, and the monographs Mapa del patrimonio musical en España (Map of the Musical Heritage of Spain), Mapa del patrimonio de danza en España (Map of the Dance Heritage of Spain) and Colecciones españolas de instrumentos musicales (Spanish Collections of Musical Instruments).

The CDMYD has organised and collaborated on exhibitions in a number of cities in Spain and overseas, including The Contemporary Music Books in Spain; 50 Years of the Spanish National Orchestra; Oscar Esplá and the Music of his Times and Images for Lyricism; Spanish Musical Theatre through Stamps; Vicente Escudero: Portrait of a Legacy and Rhythm for Space. Management of the endowments to the centre is another of the CDMYD’s responsibilities.

Since 2002, the CDMYD also manages the Spanish ISMN (International Standard Music Number) Agency. The ISMN is the international number that unequivocally identifies publications of printed music, whether for sale, hire, free dissemination or subject to copyright.

This database contains 24,000 bibliographic records of printed music published in Spain since 2002.