Music Communities – Panel Discussion & Reception

Each year at Music Current Festival we invite music audiences and the wider public to engage in debates and discussions concerning how music making is affected by technology, social changes and the political environment.

Continuing our discussion from Music Current 2025, which focused on the idea of ownership in contemporary music, and particularly on the “sense of ownership” that can arise in communities of music makers and listeners, this year we consider various models that contemporary artists and music fans are using to organise themselves around communities, networks and festivals.

There are a growing number of examples of these types of self-organised music communities. And perhaps this stands in contrast to, or in spite of, the continued ubiquity of digital media and the increasing concentration of communications resources in the hands of a trans-national corporate complex. That trend raises profound concerns regarding ownership of the means of communications. For musicians and audiences this impinges directly on the ownership of copyright, means of production and distribution. Yet despite the purported accessibility” of streamed recorded music, that model creates a distance, or remoteness, concerning the ownership of musical material, from the perspective of either composers or listeners. Moreover, digital distribution networks displace the communal nature of music making and listening.

In this discussion four music makers share insights into their professional and personal experience of practical initiative to build their own communities around festivals and events and how those networks express their ownership of their own material.

The discussion is open and accessible to public participation, and contributions are welcome from the audience. The discussion will be followed immediately at 7pm by a Music Current Festival Launch Event, where attendees are invited to join us for refreshments.

This event is hosted in collaboration with the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland’s archive and resource centre for new music. The discussion is moderated by Jonathan Grimes (CMC Head of Content) and will be recorded for the Contemporary Music Centre’s ‘amplify’ podcast (see cmc.ie/amplify). The event is free to attend, but booking is advised.