Established in 1982, the Archive & Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) now possesses nearly  32,000 hours of recording and video documentation of Indian music – classical, modern, and folk, both recent and from the earliest days of recording. There is no comparable collection anywhere in the world.

Preservation of such material requires control over temperature and humidity that is difficult to sustain in the Indian environment. AIIS has constructed special facilities that meet the demanding requirements for long-term preservation. The rapid succession of technologies in the field necessitates constant updating and accurate duplication of unique recordings that would otherwise become unusable. The skilled staff of the ARCE is equipped with the most recent technology, so that it can duplicate and reformat recordings of all kinds.

ARCE has become a repository for the field recordings of over 160 scholars, documenting most of the vast variety of performance traditions of India. Collections of recordings, long held outside India, are now available here. The collections range from ballads and oral epics, rituals and musical genres from all over India to the classical music traditions. The archives also houses an extensive collection of 10,000 commercial recordings which include recording formats from 78 rpm discs to compact discs. The ARCE has excellent listening and viewing facilities for reference to these collections.

The archives are supported by a specialized library of over 10,000 books as well as over 150 journals with a focus on the study of ethnomusicology in India. Other activities of the center include seminars in the field of ethnomusicology and providing training in audio visual archiving through workshops and internships.