本文將透過臺灣熱門音樂的研究來探討音樂歷史研究上遭遇的困難及可能的解決方法。熱門音樂指的是冷戰期間隨美軍駐臺而傳入的英美流行音樂，當時它多是以盜版唱片和無名樂人的現場演出而傳播。這個建立在複製、缺乏原創作品、缺乏刻寫記錄的音樂現象在慣常的歷史音樂研究中常被忽視，研究者也遲疑如何可以作為分析文本。本文因此嘗試討論熱門音樂作為研究課題的意義，並從兩個面向對它的歷史進行挖掘：第一為記憶史，筆者探索音樂人口述歷史中的集體記憶，尋找這套象徵意義論述中依託記憶之所在；第二為大眾文化檔案，這類近來因數位科技而由玩家勞動力在網路上匯聚成的資料庫，有意無意的資訊交流成為當代與過去日常生活的記錄與描述。

This article will discuss the difficulties and their potential solutions in the historical research of musics, which have no written or recorded objects, like Taiwanese hit music. Here, hit music refers to the English popular music introduced by the American military presence in Taiwan during the cold war. Pirated records and the live performances of ordinary musicians were the ways to disseminate this music at that time. Taiwanese hit music is not a matter for academic discussion due to the lack of original material (since it mostly consisted of covers), and scholars hesitate what could be the analytical texts. This article tries to indicate the significance of hit music study and dig its history from two approaches: one, finding the collective memory in the oral history of ordinary musicians, and looking for the “lieux de mémoire” in their symbolic discourses; the other, “popular cultural archives”, a new form of archive in digital era constructed by internet “playbour”, which result in writing down everyday life and representing the past, intentionally or not, through their information exchanges.