Volume! was established in 2002 under the title Copyright Volume! by Gérôme Guibert, Marie-Pierre Bonniol, and Samuel Étienne, and obtained its current name in 2009. Étienne was its first editor-in-chief, before Stéphane Dorin, Gérôme Guibert and Emmanuel Parent took over.
Since November 2011, Volume ! is included in the French academic journals portal and since December 2011 in the Belgian portal, Cairn.info. All issues are available online on Openedition.org ; the six latest ones are on Cairn.info with the last four under restricted access. Since June 2016, it is also on RILM Abstracts with Full Text.
Volume and the Éditions Mélanie Seteun have directed the electronic publication of the first French popular music studies journal Vibrations. Musiques, médias, société, created by Antoine Hennion, Jean-Rémy Julien and Jean-Claude Klein in the mid-1980s, on the French academic portal Persée.
It also published a special international, English edition of its "countercultures" issues with Ashgate Publishing, a partnership with the Éditions Mélanie Seteun that had already taken place for the publication of the book Stereo: Comparative Perspectives on the Sociological Study of Popular Music in France and Britain.
Conferences
It has co-organized many conferences, among which:
"Rock and violences in Europe ", in 2017;
"Conçues pour durer. Perspectives francophones sur les musiques hip-hop";
"Heavy metal et sciences sociales : un état des lieux de la recherche francophone" in Angers,;
the 2013 "Changing the Tune. Popular music and politics in the XXIst century" international conference in Strasbourg with the German association ASPM and the French branch of the IASPM.;
In November 2012, it participated in the conference on "Digital Publishing in the Humanities. Perspectives from France and Canada" organized by the French Consulate in Toronto, the French Institute, the University of Toronto, and York University.;
"What is it we call “Black music”?" in Bordeaux, 2010.
Events
It organizes events with various institutions, such as the Musée du Quai Branly, the Centre Georges Pompidoupublic library, the Cité de la Musique, the Philharmonie de Paris, La Gaîté Lyrique, the Collège International de Philosophie, or the Centre Musical Fleury Goutte d'Or-Barbara, as well as with record labels/festivals, such as the festival "F.A.M.E. Film Music & Experience" in March 2014, or in May 2012, the "Humanist Records Festival #3" and venues, such as the Point Éphémère. The "Great Black Music" exhibit at the Cité de la Musique in Paris was co-curated by journalist Marc Benaïche and ethnomusicologist Emmanuel Parent. The latter, a member of the journal's team since 2004, had co-organized the 2010 "What is it we call Black Music?" conference in Bordeaux whose proceedings were published in Volume!. He was also in charge of editing the exhibit's catalogue.
Media
From October 2012 to January 2013, Volume! editors were offered sequences on François Saltiel's show on Le Mouv'., and the Radio Télévision Suisse dedicated two issues of "Histoire Vivante" to Volume! in October 2013. A partnership with the website, created by historian Pierre Rosanvallon, to publish reviews of books dealing with popular music, was started in November 2013.
