The CMA collection includes books, journals (which will be merged with the University Library) and a vast variety of audiovisual materials of Chinese music, covering various traditional genres, revolutionary music and pop music. CMA aims to serve scholars from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan and overseas. The audiovisual materials will be digitalized in phases, in order to build a digital archive to facilitate teaching and research on Chinese music.

CMA has developed special collections named after the donors or the contents of the collection. These include the Cheung Sai Bung collection, the Rediffusion collection, the Mandarin pop collection, the Yam-Pak collection, the Sik Kok Sin collection, the Huang Xiangpeng collection, the Lee Yui Cho collection, the Ho Heng Chuen collection, and a collection of replicas of ancient musical instruments.