The National Pop Institute was devoted to the development and quality of Dutch pop music since 1975. This included all kinds of pop music: from pop and rock to hip-hop, urban, dance, crossover and world music.

The former National Pop Institute (acquired by Music Centre The Netherlands in 2008) controlled various subsidies for pop musicians, venues and festivals, and organised promotional activities for Dutch pop music both within the Netherlands and abroad. The Pop Institute also managed the online Dutch Music Encyclopaedia, containing biographies of over 1500 bands and performers dating from 1945 up to the present.

Besides the images used for The Memory, the National Pop Institute Collection also contains several thousands of photographs that were commissioned by FRET, the magazine for Dutch pop music. The rest of the National Pop Institute Collection consists of books, magazines, sound carriers and clippings about pop music. These can be accessed in the institute's media centre.

Up until 2012, the collection was maintained by the former Music Centre The Netherlands, and since 2013 by the department of Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam.