March 21-23, we held the first Music Tech Fest in North America at Microsoft Research New England. It was a three day bonanza of ideas spanning a mind-bending spectrum of ways to connect music and technology.

The day after, 21 scholars met for a symposium we called What is Music Technology For? Our goal was to write a manifesto. Today we are proud to announce the launch of the Manifesto. As we say on the about page:

Those at the symposium were motivated by a passion for music, a fascination with technology and culture, and a concern for how music technology is now developing. Recognizing the fertility of music technology as a subject that bridges computational, scientific, social scientific and humanistic approaches, we looked for common ground across those fields. We debated and developed a set of shared principles about the future of music technology.

Built from the notes of that day’s event, and revised together in the weeks that followed, this manifesto is the collaboratively-authored product of this meeting.

Read more about the manifesto and who was involved on the about page. We hope those of you with overlapping interests in music and in technology will sign on.