@article{Serra-2026,
abstract = {Artificial intelligence (AI) has become central to debates about the future of music, particularly with the rise of generative systems and their societal, economic, cultural, and legal implications. Public and policy discourse, however, often follows commercial narratives that narrow music‑AI to automated generation and treat music primarily as data or commodified output. This obscures both the broader range of AI applications in music and the long‑standing contributions and responsibilities of the music information retrieval (MIR) community. Addressed primarily to this community, the article argues that MIR is well positioned to contribute to current debates on trustworthy music‑AI but must also critically examine the limitations of its own research practices and incentives. We briefly situate MIR’s methodological development, applications, and shared infrastructures, emphasizing the culturally and socially situated character of music data. We then examine ethical, legal, and governance challenges in music‑AI and propose transparency, accountability, provenance, and sustainability as criteria for assessing current practice and guiding future work. Finally, we identify six interconnected priorities: mission‑oriented collaboration; sustainable open infrastructures; rigorous and context‑sensitive evaluation; cultural diversity and responsibility; engagement across research, industry, policy, and society; and interdisciplinary education and mutual capacity‑building. We conclude by identifying ways in which the MIR community can translate these priorities into practice through its research, infrastructures, evaluation and publication processes, educational activities, and engagement with musical, industry, policy, and civil society communities.},
author = {Serra, Xavier and Alluri, Vinoo and Balke, Stefan and Bello, Juan Pablo and Benetos, Emmanouil and Bogdanov, Dmitry and Devaney, Johanna and Dixon, Simon and Duan, Zhiyao and Fazekas, George and Flexer, Arthur and Font, Frederic and Fuentes, Magdalena and Fujinaga, Ichiro and Gómez, Emilia and Goto, Masataka and Hennequin, Romain and Herremans, Dorien and Hu, Xiao and Jeong, Dasaem and Knees, Peter and Korzeniowski, Filip and Lattner, Stefan and Lee, Jin Ha and Lerch, Alexander and Liem, Cynthia and McFee, Brian and Molina, Emilio and Müller, Meinard and Nakano, Tomoyasu and Nam, Juhan and Nieto, Oriol and Oramas, Sergio and Pardo, Bryan and Peeters, Geoffroy and Rao, Preeti and Richard, Gaël and Rocamora, Martín and Srinivasamurthy, Ajay and Su, Li and Sturm, Bob L. T. and Tzanetakis, George and Volk, Anja and Wang, Ye and Widmer, Gerhard and Wiering, Frans and Weiß, Christof and Yang, Yi-Hsuan and Zangerle, Eva},
doi = {10.5334/tismir.372},
journal = {Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval},
keyword = {en},
month = {Sep},
title = {AI and Music at a Crossroads: The Role of the Music Information Retrieval (MIR) Community in Shaping Trustworthy, Open, and Culturally Inclusive Music‑AI},
year = {2026}
}