Creative Industries: Technologies, Tools, and Transformations

AC[M] Creative Industries Futures Symposium 2026
Date: Thursday 11th June, 2026
Venue: Rich Mix, 35–47 Bethnal Grn Rd, London, E1 6LA

This call for contributions invites academics, industry professionals, researchers, practitioners and students to submit proposals to present at our fourth annual event addressing the future of the creative industries. This year’s theme, Technologies, Tools, and Transformations, explores the integration and application of innovative technologies within the creative industries/practices, spanning music, games, film, and beyond.

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IASPM Journal Special Issue: Mental Health in Popular Music

This Special Issue is motivated by the increasing visibility of mental health discourses in popular music. From long-standing myths of “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll”, the “27 Club”, or the “tortured genius”, to recent disclosures by artists across genres, health-related themes have shaped the history of popular music cultures around the world. The tragic deaths of Avicii, Lil Peep, Amy Winehouse, Kim Jong-Hyun, Liam Payne, and others have placed mental health at the centre of public and industry debates. At the same time, contemporary stars such as Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, and Justin Bieber have significantly altered the visibility of how psychological struggles are communicated and negotiated – both artistically and through practices of self-representation in online and offline contexts. Their work reflects and, in turn, influences wider societal debates and experiences of mental health.

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Producing Music, Producing Knowledge: Practice, Technology, and Culture in Music Production

Society for Music Production Research 3rd Annual Conference
September 9-11, 2026,  University of Huddersfield, UK

Overview
The 2026 Society for Music Production Research (SMPR) Conference, Producing Music, Producing Knowledge, brings together the international music production research community to explore the creative, technical, and cultural practices that define how music is produced, experienced, and understood.

SMPR is an international society dedicated to building knowledge and dialogue among practitioners and scholars of music production. Its work spans creation, technology, pedagogy, aesthetics, and reception—bridging research and practice across diverse musical and cultural contexts.

Hosted at the University of Huddersfield, home to one of the world’s largest communities of music production and popular music researchers, the conference provides a forum for critical, creative, and professional exchange.

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Music at the Edges: Peripherality in the practices of popular music

June 29 – July 1, 2026
University of Aberdeen, Kings College, Aberdeen, Scotland

For this meeting of the UK and Ireland branch of IASPM we invite scholars to explore and reflect on the conceptof peripherality as it relates to the diversity of practices undertaken in relation to music making anddissemination. We consider peripherality here in both its literal (spatial and geographical) forms and in themore metaphorical ways that attitudes and behaviours are shaped by a perceived distance from an impliedcentre. To this end, we encourage considerations of the ways in which peripherality may influence how musicis created, performed, recorded, and disseminated within and from such locales. This may include locationsthat are geographically isolated, taking into consideration the positive and negative influences on the localmusic scenes and their functioning. Peripherality may also refer to the ways in which the music markets withinsuch locales might be considered satellite markets for other centres of production. We also recognise theways in which specific genres of music may be considered ‘underground’ when positioned in relation to‘mainstream’ genres and hence are considered peripheral within specific markets. Furthermore, we recognise the ways in which digital and internet technologies can break down traditional barriers between the centre and the periphery and the tensions which may arise as a result of this.

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Statement on the proposed suspension of recruitment to all undergraduate programmes at the University of Nottingham

By the UK and Ireland branch of IASPM, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music
8 December 2025

The Executive Committee of IASPM UK and Ireland collectively express our deep concern over the University of Nottingham’s recent decision to suspend recruitment to all undergraduate programmes in music, risking permanent closure of all music degrees at the University.

As representatives of the largest association of popular music researchers in Europe, we call on the University to reverse this decision and engage positively with its staff and students to find a solution that secures the department’s future and respects its significant achievements across all domains of music including popular music studies.

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Music, Crisis, Memory

An International Interdisciplinary Conference
School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University, 8-9 May 2026

Music can act as an essential tool for accessing and even shaping memories, particularly in times of crisis or when experiencing grief and loss. Music can also trigger vivid memories, including those related to specific events, emotions, or individuals. In various published studies, scholars demonstrate that music has long served as a powerful medium for communal mourning and remembrance in times of crisis, providing a way to process grief and make loss audible.

When we discuss the relationships between music, crisis, and memory in depth, many questions arise: How does music support people through times of crisis and loss (e.g. global pandemic, fatal warfare and natural disaster)? How do we remember or forget crises musically? How can music function as a memory carrier as well as a healer? What remarkable crisis has the music industry dealt with? How does the crisis inspire music composition and create musical memory?

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Cyborg Voices: Identity, Artistry, and Performance in the Age of AI

Editor: Chloe Kirson-Jones
Publisher: Jenny Stanford publishing distributed through Taylor and Francis
Projected Publication: January 2027

Overview

How does the voice change when it becomes digital, disembodied, and co-created with machines? This edited volume examines the shifting landscape of vocal identity and artistry in the era of artificial intelligence. Bringing together scholars, artists, and practitioners, Cyborg Voices explores how AI-generated and technologically-mediated voices are transforming performance, authorship, and embodiment in popular music and digital culture.

The collection builds from practice-based research in which the editor develops and performs with an AI-synthesised version of her voice. Through this lens, the volume investigates the cyborg voice as a site of resistance, hybridity, vulnerability, and creative reinvention.

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‘Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr Epstein’ (Dick Rowe, 1962): the Impact and Influence of the British Invasion (1964-1967)

University of Orléans, France, Friday May 29th 2026

Dick Rowe’s famous rejection of the Beatles in 1962 couldn’t have been further from the truth and while guitar bands like the Shadows were indeed about to be sidelined by a new wave of largely Liverpool Beat Groups, the guitar remained central to the sound and success of what eventually became known as the British Invasion. Rowe must have accepted the inevitability of eating his own words when George Harrison encouraged him to sign the Rolling Stones in 1963, a tip off that quite possibly saved him his job at Decca Records and further consolidated the guitar as central to the instrumentation of the mid-60s. Keith Richards, Dave Davies, George Harrison, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton – to name but a few – all kept the guitar very much within the sonic foreground of recorded music and live performance in a decade that saw the UK supplant, if only for a brief window of time, the dominance of popular music from the USA. None the less, the fact that most of the instruments played by British guitarists were American models was a reminder of where the original inspiration for bands like the Beatles and the Stones came from, as well as a visible manifestation of the transatlantic-cross-town-traffic of influence that characterised the period.

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Innovation In Music 2026

Aalborg University, City Campus, Rendsburggade 14, Aalborg, Denmark
12-15 June 2026

Music Beyond Tools and Rules
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Have you ever experienced the thrill of creating music with an instrument, software, or interactive system that seems to listen, respond, and even inspire you in return? At InMusic’26, we want to explore the mutual relationships between humans and non-human systems in music, where listening, interaction, and co-creation open new possibilities for sound, composition, performance, and sonic experience.
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We invite researchers, practitioners, creatives, producers, artists, industry professionals, technology developers, and equipment manufacturers to examine how technology can become a collaborative partner—not just a tool—in music-making, listening, performance, and interactive sound experiences. How do humans and technology resonate together? How does the act of listening and the conditions for creative decisions change when mediated by algorithms, AI, or interactive systems? How can co-creation with technology generate new forms of musical expression, perception, and experience?
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Popular Music Methodologies Conference

Middlesex University, London, UK
18th – 19th June 2026

Following the publication, in 2025, of The Intellect Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies, edited by Mike Dines, Shara Rambarran and Gareth Dylan Smith, a hybrid conference will be held at Middlesex University in June 2026 to continue the discussion. The Popular Music Methodologies Conference will address the diverse ways we study, interpret and engage with popular music methodologies, bringing together researchers, scholars, practitioners and students across the disciplines and field that enable us to reflect on the tools, theories, and practices that currently shape the research of popular music.

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