Beyond The Music is back, taking over Salford’s Media City with its massive festival-cum-conference supporting all aspects the music industry. Whether you’re in the creative industries or just a massive music fan there’s loads to peak your interest including multiple stages, panels, and keynote speeches.
If it’s all a bit overwhelming, looking at the packed lineup across four days, we’ve picked out some highlights including a screening and panel of Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, featuring Steve Coogan himself, and a first-of-its-kind AI summit, convened by the PM and (more importantly) former Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham.
24th-anniversary screening of 24 Hour Party People
The remastered 24 Hour Party People will open Beyond The Music at MediaCity in Salford on Tuesday 6 October, followed by a conversation with Coogan, Winterbottom and producer Andrew Eaton. The screening comes 24 years after the release of Winterbottom’s 2002 comedy drama, which tells the story of Manchester’s music scene from the late 1970s into the early 90s through Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, played by Coogan.
Creator Activists Assemble: The Art of Resistance
Creators, industry-leaders and advocates explore how creative activism is reshaping infrastructure within the music industry including resistance to ticket touting, green touring and campaigning around streaming and AI. The panel includes, Molly Neuman President of CD Baby, artists Nina Nesbitt, The Anchoress and The Ting Tings, plus Vicky Dowdall the Founder of VDM Music and YolanDa Brown OBE DL, Chair of the BPI.
ALT BLK ERA
A blend of rap, rock and D&B, inspired by the hardcore of Bruise Control and the progressive metal of Manchester’s 40,000 Leagues, Nottingham sister duo ALT BLK ERA have been gaining attention as part of Britain’s new wave of alternative acts. They perform at Media City Studios as part of Beyond The Music, alongside a stacked lineup including Gen and the Degenerates, BEX and Pavé. Music fans who like it heavy will not want to miss out.
B Side: Fandom Rewired
In a world of algorithms and attention economies what is the relationship between fans and artists? This panel at Beyond The Music will delve into fandom, what fans deserve from the artists they love and how to measure and engage fandoms for the modern world.
How Music Can Save The World
The world has more music than at any point in human history and less capacity for collective action than at any point in living memory. Shain Shapiro, PhD, explores how the two facts may be connected in a keynote speech at Beyond The Music. Discussing the thesis laid out in his forthcoming book, How Music Can Save The World, Shapiro will argue that music is not entertainment that happens to be powerful, but core human infrastructure and while we’ve spent years perfecting music technology, the participatory practice that builds collective capacity has been left to decay.
He’ll then be joined by a panel to test the thesis: can music help rebuild the trust that the UK, and the world, needs to act together again?
The Creative Industries AI Summit
As the finale to Beyond The Music 2026, they will host the worlds first Creative Industries AI summit, with the aim of getting all the content industries to agree an official stance on AI for the first time. Andy Burnham convened the first-of-its-kind summit, which will bring the leading practitioners and policymakers from every content industry together to look at, licensing, provenance, attribution and enforcement as they relate to AI. Taking over from Burnham, Manchester Mayor Bev Craig will be in attendance along with Ian Murray MP to contribute to and consider the discussion. A huge moment for the creative industries, that will certainly shape the future of the artistic economies happening right here, in Manchester.
Beyond The Music: All the best gigs
Beyond The Music are hosting a major schedule of programmes for their conference portion including talks, panels, summits and screenings, but they’re not just talking the talk. They’ll also be championing emerging artists and grass-roots venues by hosting a number of curated evenings of live music.
Highlights include Thursday’s Chris Hawkins x SXSW stage, curated by Radio 6 Music DJ Hawkins and South by Southwest, you’ll get to see a bunch of new acts handpicked by the industry experts as being on the way up, including The K’s, Tom A. Smith, The Wran and more. They perform at MediaCity Studios on The Russell Club stage.
Also at MediaCity Studios, Dot to Dot festival have curated another stage, and they’re known for booking future headliners; their Nottingham and Bristol festival has featured Idles, Hard Life and London Grammar, all before they made it big. Manchester gets a taste of their booking talent at Beyond The Music as they’ve lined-up SILVERWINGKILLER, Bloodworm, LIINES and Georgian for the Russell Club Stage.
There’s loads more up-and-coming artists hand-selected for your listening pleasure across a bunch of venues around Manchester. Buy tickets per event that you want to go to, grab a wristband to get into every gig or an all encompassing pass to get access to the talks too – it’s up to you – but make sure you see something, you might just be witnessing the next big thing.