New York Music Month Q&A: AI, Job Seeking, Mental Health & What Else to Expect This Year
Categoria: Musica
New York Music Month prepares for its June celebrations with programming that discusses AI and how to get jobs in the music industry.
Por Billboard | 20/05/2026
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 more than 40 talks and more than 20 performances in 30 days across all five boroughs. Related Billboard’s Music Industry Events Calendar J-Pop Festival Zipangu & Xbox Team Up for Sung Kang Fashion Collab Kodak Black Arrested for Second Time in Less Than a Month, This Time for Fleeing Law Enforcement 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