This article aims to present an inventory of publications on music that could be described as “scientific” or even “musicological”, mainly in French music press prior to the creation of the Bulletin de la Société française de musicologie in 1917. Our research draws from various musical journals, and scrutinises the career of musicologists who exert decisive influence on the orientations of the discipline between 1889 and 1914. Our survey reinforces the idea that French musicology develops in concomitance with other humanities and social sciences. Besides, it opened up to other fields of music study that actually covered the entire spectrum of approaches defined by Guido Adler in 1885. While the history of composers and their works dominates many writings, we must also take into account new research objects such as history of music institutions, psychology of music, music theory, folk and exotic repertoires, and modern music.