A curated archive of rare musician footage

DeepCutsArchive

There is something extraordinary about stumbling across a clip you've never seen before — a musician before they were famous, a legendary studio caught on a handheld camera, or a moment backstage that was never meant to be filmed.

1208 rare clips across 160 artists and counting.

Browse all →By decade →All artists →

Why DeepCutsArchive exists

The footage that shaped the music world is disappearing

Somewhere on the internet, there's grainy footage of a young Jimi Hendrix playing a tiny club before anyone knew his name. There's a handheld video from inside Studio A at Abbey Road while the Beatles were tracking. There's a 30-second clip of a Motown session musician laughing between takes that tells you more about the magic of Hitsville USA than any documentary ever could.

These clips surface on Facebook groups, get shared on TikTok, appear in obscure YouTube channels — and then they vanish. Accounts get deleted. Videos get taken down. Links rot. The footage that captures the real, unpolished truth behind the music we love is scattered across the internet with no home.

DeepCutsArchive is that home. A place to find, save, and share the rare clips of the musical figures, the recording studios, the dive bars, and the street corners that created the music world as we know it.

From the founder

A lifelong obsession with the sounds behind closed doors

I'm Jamie, and I've been obsessed with music my entire life — not just the songs, but the stories behind them. How they were made, where they were recorded, the look on someone's face when they played a riff for the first time and knew it was special.

It started when I stumbled across a clip of Paul McCartney messing around in the studio, working out a bassline that would end up on one of the most famous albums ever recorded. It was shaky, poorly lit, clearly never meant for public consumption — and it was the most captivating thing I'd ever watched.

I started collecting these clips. Screenshots, bookmarks, playlists buried in my YouTube history. Clips from Facebook groups that share rare 60s and 70s footage. TikTok accounts that resurface old concert recordings. Eventually I realised that if I didn't organise this properly, I'd lose half of it — and so would everyone else.

That's why I built DeepCutsArchive. Not as a business, but as a labour of love for anyone who feels the same thrill I do when they see footage they've never seen before of the people who made the music that soundtracked their life.

Help build the archive

Add your favourite clips for the world to find

The best clips come from people like you — music lovers who know a gem when they see one. There are two ways to contribute.

The Chrome Extension

Install the DeepCutsArchive Clipper and submit clips with a single click while you're browsing YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram. It automatically grabs the video title, artist name, and platform — all you do is hit submit.

Perfect for when you're deep in a rabbit hole at 2am and find something incredible that needs to be preserved.

Get the extension →

Submit on the site

Use the submit page to add a clip directly. Paste the URL from YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram, tell us who's in it and what makes it special, and we'll add it to the archive.

Every submission is reviewed to keep the archive focused on genuinely rare, interesting footage — not official music videos or mainstream content.

Submit a clip →