The month of June in New York City is often jam-packed with music. Within just a few weeks, Indie Week, the Libera Awards, Governors Ball, The Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and dozens of other events will take place, marking the official start of summer. For the past nine years, the New York City mayor’s office of media entertainment (MOME) has gotten on board with New York Music Month (NYMM), and Shira Gans, MOME’s senior executive director of policy and programs, is busy laying out the schedule for this year’s programming, which includes 60 events in 30 days across all five boroughs.
In the weeks leading up to the event, Gans is finalizing programming and ensuring this year’s conference taking place on June 3 touches on each facet of what’s impacting the music industry right now, from the integration of AI to how to find a job after layoffs.
When NYMM first launched in 2017, there were 12 events in all. This year’s programming includes 38 talks, 21 performances, the main conference and the return of NYMM’s free rehearsal series, offering more than 2,000 hours of free rehearsal space across four locations.
“It gets crazy,” Gans tells Billboard. “When I think of how it’s evolved over the years, it’s grown on a lot of levels… When I think about creating it, I think of it as infrastructure. And that’s really changed as I’ve seen the industry get more and more excited about Music Month. It’s a true public partnership.”
Last year marked the first time NYMM began charging for tickets to its conference, with Gans explaining they did so in order to ensure people who signed up were in attendance. Tickets currently run for $30, including all-in fees.
“What’s happening in New York is a rare alignment where public policy, private industry and independent creators stop orbiting separately and start operating as one ecosystem, acknowledging that culture survives only when the infrastructure behind it is intentionally built,” Josh Rabinowitz, music consultant and professor at Brooklyn Music Experience, says. “The result is NYC not just hosting the music business, but actively engineering the conditions that allow the future of the industry to exist here.”
As NYMM unveils its full lineup of events, Gans explains how the event has grown to become such an integral part of the city’s and the music industry’s infrastructure.
How do you source your programming for this event year after year?
Everything is sourced from the industry itself. Every idea, for the most part, is really somebody coming to me and saying, “Hey, I think this would benefit the segment of the industry that I work in.” I think this is an important topic. And then we’re able to invest and give funding to do that. So, it becomes a mirror and a megaphone.
When you’re on the conference circuit, it’s often the same people that get on the stage, either because that’s who people know, or it’s driven by sponsorships. No shade to that, but we try to move away from it. Beyond it growing some of the topics, I think it’s interesting to see how that shifts over time.
How do live events factor into NYMM?
In the beginning, I wasn’t that comfortable with live music being part of the conference. We co-branded with SummerStage and Celebrate Brooklyn, but I didn’t necessarily want the city to be putting our finger on the balance of culture and deciding, “This act is good and this act doesn’t get city funding.” As it’s grown and we’ve gotten more partnerships — I curate the curators, so we’re really working with people who are working with up-and-coming artists — on the performance side, it shifted, too, in that we did have more programming in terms of live music.
In the beginning, it was a partnership with the parks department to give opportunities for underserved communities in the Bronx and Queens. And, in the last couple of years, as this has become more of an industry-established thing, we’ve shifted focus to be a platform for emerging artists.
What are all your offerings within NYMM’s programming?
It starts with four verticals. It’s the conference talks, performances, we put rehearsal space to the side and then it’s this multidimensional matrix of factors. I’m considering the value of music. Are we getting things for artists? Are we getting things on the business side? Are we looking at sync? Are we looking at distribution? Are we looking at legal? This year, we’re going to have an event on the state of music journalism. What’s happening to that? And, if you don’t have local acts, if you don’t have as many local journalists, how do you get someone covered? If you can’t get them covered, how does that shift artist discovery and things like that?
I’ve added stuff on the hiring landscape, so we have one event that’s about, “You got laid off, what’s next?” I have another with a music headhunter who’s bringing together HR from major music companies to talk about what they’re looking for. There’s more in mental health. There’s been a lot of interest in the last couple years of people looking at the intersection of mental health from the angles of the challenges working in the industry, the challenges of an artist, and now how music is being used as healthcare.
How do you keep this event fresh year after year?
We rebranded last year, which I think helped a lot. It felt a bit like the school science fair because we didn’t have a consistent brand. We have the logo, but every individual event the person would create their own branding. We worked with a really great creative director, and now with our socials we created these templates that are color-coded by the vertical and there’s a lot of different choices. New York Music Month is cool because it’s the sum of all the parts, and now we have this brand and people see that they all look a little different, but then you start to get it.
How do you envision this event benefiting the New York City creator community?
I think it benefits them in several ways. The lineup is largely focused on professional development, be it actual skill building, free headshots and things like that.
Conferences are expensive. Even membership to different organizations can be challenging to figure out. I think professional development is important. I think networking itself is really important, as people think about some doomsday idea around AI. I do think human connection is something you can’t really replace and the strength of an industry really has to do with these different levels of strong ties and weak ties and how you meet people.
One of the biggest topics of conversation right now is around AI. How do you think that might impact New York City’s musicians and creators, and what panels and conversations do you have included in this year’s programming?
We’re going to have a panel on AI led by Drew Thurlow, who’s written books on the subject. And we’re going to have different perspectives — it’s a panel, right? We’ll have ElevenLabs there, other authors and academics who are thinking about AI. I think we’re moved from the philosophical parts, which first came up with Vernon Reed on stage in 2023. Back then, it was this mind-blowing idea. Now it’s more looking at the legal angles, and revenue models. How are people using that to make money? I think New York City is about innovation, and one of the things that makes it a great city is that it’s at the intersection of film, TV, advertising, tech and finance. That’s not something you have in L.A. or Nashville and is really unique to New York, and most of the programming is going to take that angle.
Liverpool, England recently hosted their own Music Month, taking inspiration from NYMM. What can other cities learn from events such as this one?
When you connect with people and talk about it, then you can model best practices and you can take ideas from other cities or places and see what’s worked. When we set the Office of Nightlife, that was really a moment that started in Europe talking about the nighttime economy and thinking about it in a way that was way advanced for the U.S., and that was something we were paying attention to. San Francisco had that with the nightlife board, which was there to protect nightlife and keep venues open late. Austin has done cool stuff with bringing artists from Scandinavian countries to do songwriting camps and helping monetize music as an export with those kinds of collaborations. I think we have a lot to learn from other cities.
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