MW:M Sessions 

Hop on the bus and explore Berlin’s music scene with fellow international MW:M delegates, including speakers. Organised by Berlin Music Commission, the tour connects four visits to venues and creative spaces, with time to meet their hosts and fellow delegates.

Tuesday, 3 November 2026, 13:00–18:00 (Berlin time).
Meeting point: nhow Berlin at 13:00.

Stops:
13:10–13:45 — MAAYA: a multicultural event and community space at RAW-Gelände.
14:00–14:50 — Tresor: a guided visit exploring the club and label’s history, legacy, and the challenges and successes of running the club today.
15:30–16:30 — Studio visit with Stefanie Egedy at Haus der Visionäre: sound, spatial perception and low-frequency vibration.
16:50–17:50 — DUYU: a hands-on visit to an independent music house in Gräfekiez.

Register for the entire bus tour or selected stops: https://airtable.com/appHkk592aL9dZU2y/pagGwfQxBlQMDdgaV/form

For questions, cancellations or special access needs, contact Antoine at antoine@mwm-berlin.de ahead of the tour.

Discover the story behind DUYU, an independent music house in Gräfekiez bringing together instruments and sounds from around the world. This hands-on visit includes a welcome with tea and the opportunity to explore and play a wide range of instruments, experiencing DUYU as a meeting point for creativity and connection.

Part of the MW:M26 international delegates bus tour on Tuesday, 3 November, 16:50–17:50. Join the full tour by bus or register for selected stops: https://airtable.com/appHkk592aL9dZU2y/pagGwfQxBlQMDdgaV/form

Discover Tresor, a Berlin techno nightclub and record label, on a guided tour led by Alexander Schulze. The visit explores Tresor’s history and legacy in Berlin’s techno scene, alongside the challenges and successes of running the club in today’s cultural and economic context.

Part of the MW:M26 international delegates bus tour on Tuesday, 3 November, 14:00–14:50. Join the full tour by bus or register for selected stops: https://airtable.com/appHkk592aL9dZU2y/pagGwfQxBlQMDdgaV/form

Visit MAAYA, a multicultural event and community space at the RAW-Gelände in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Delegates will explore its indoor floor, garden, pool and backyard, and meet the venue’s CEO to discuss a space that has become a home for Berlin’s Afro-diasporic and other communities through club nights, concerts, daytime gatherings and public events.

Part of the MW:M26 international delegates bus tour on Tuesday, 3 November, 13:10–13:45. Join the full tour by bus or register for selected stops: https://airtable.com/appHkk592aL9dZU2y/pagGwfQxBlQMDdgaV/form

This study explores the folk musical instruments, songs and cultural activities of a community residing southwest in the Konso zone of Ethiopia, specifically Fasha and Gamole. The focus of this research is on folk music, associated ceremonies and how the Konso musical traditions are practiced today.

The study is based around a musical ethnography approach grounded in a conceptual framework of music as culture and relied upon data collection through observation, participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, musical discographies and the reviewing of documents. The findings identified key folk instruments, including horns, wind instruments, percussion and lyres, with particular focus on the Komborta, Kawla and Kihayitta instruments.

The study also examines traditional folk music styles and dances such as Irgotta and Leotta. Overall, the musical characteristics of the Konso community reveal highly synchronised, sophisticated and complex patterns of music and dance, which will be explored in depth in the session.

Layers is a live audiovisual performance built from synthesisers, layered voice, and dense sonic textures — working at the intersection of experimental electronic music, spectral composition, and deconstructed club music. The work explores altered states of perception, embodied presence, and the physical experience of sound in space. As a Brazilian immigrant artist based in Switzerland, the practice carries sonic vocabularies of Brazil and the Latin diaspora into experimental and club-adjacent contexts. Layers proposes performance as research: each live set investigates synthesis, extended vocal technique and the boundaries between composition and improvisation — raising questions about whose bodies and sonic cultures are centred in music technology discourse, and what it means to rewire those structures from within.

Streaming ist längst ein zentraler Teil der Musikwirtschaft doch viele Musikschaffende profitieren noch immer nicht fair von den Erlösen. Gleichzeitig ist Bewegung in die politische Debatte gekommen: Es geht um Transparenz, faire Vergütungsmodelle, Plattformmacht, Streaming-Fraud, KI und die Frage, wie Musiker*innen stärker in Entscheidungen eingebunden werden.

Diese Session fragt nicht nur, was im Streaming schiefläuft, sondern was jetzt konkret folgen muss. Welche politischen Schritte braucht es? Welche Verantwortung tragen Plattformen, Labels, Verbände und Kulturpolitik? Und wie kann faire Beteiligung im digitalen Musikmarkt verbindlicher gestaltet werden?

Women of Color prägen die Creative Industries und die Musikbranche: Sie bauen Karrieren auf, leiten Projekte und öffnen Türen. Für viele bedeutet das auch, als eine der ersten Personen in ihren Familien, Communities oder beruflichen Umfeldern bestimmte Räume zu betreten und diese Wege selbstbestimmt zu gestalten.

Diese Roundtable Discussion fragt, wie Frauen of Color sich in Branchen bewegen, in denen Zugang zu Netzwerken, Ressourcen, Sichtbarkeit und Entscheidungsmacht weiterhin ungleich verteilt ist und welches Wissen sie auf diesem Weg gesammelt haben.

Gemeinsam fragen wir: Welches Wissen können wir teilen? Wie bauen wir nachhaltige Karrieren und Support-Systeme auf? Und welche Wege können wir für diejenigen schaffen, die nach uns kommen?

Die Krisen sind benannt. Jetzt geht es darum, was daraus folgt. Dieser Roundtable bringt Verbände, Interessenvertretungen und Akteurinnen der Musikförderung zusammen, um nächste Schritte für eine handlungsfähige Musikwirtschaft zu diskutieren.

Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage, wie die Branche aus dem Krisenmodus herauskommt: Welche Strategien haben sich bewährt? Wo braucht es neue Allianzen, gemeinsame Forderungen und politische Impulse? Und wie müssen Förderstrukturen weitergedacht werden, damit sie zugänglicher, transparenter und wirksamer für Artists, Initiativen, Clubs, Labels und unabhängige Akteurinnen werden?

Berlin is often spoken about as one music scene, but in reality it is made up of many different scenes, spaces and communities: club culture, migrant and diasporic communities, experimental music, rap, pop, queer collectives, DIY spaces, independent venues and artist-led initiatives -the list goes on.
This session asks how these different parts of the city’s music ecosystem can be better connected without losing what makes them specific. Where do scenes already support each other? Where do they remain disconnected? And what kinds of bridges, formats or support structures could help Berlin’s music communities become more visible and connected while staying independent?

What an artist owns has become a wider question than copyright alone. Voice, likeness, name, performance data and creative credit can all now be used, licensed or replicated and the rules covering them are being written across several jurisdictions at once. Some of it is already settled. Work generated without meaningful human creative input does not attract protection. Licensing frameworks are emerging from settlements between rightsholders and AI companies. Platforms are introducing disclosure requirements when AI contributes materially to a track and voice protection legislation is moving in several markets.
This panel brings together legal, publishing and distribution perspectives to cover what artists can protect, what they are now obliged to declare and where those decisions actually land: at the point of signing, at the point of release and at the point someone else uses the work.

Across the world, queer clubs and dedicated LGBTQIA+ nightlife spaces are disappearing under combined social and economic pressures, but at the same time, queer sound artists have become increasingly visible within mainstream club culture.

What is lost when dedicated queer venues disappear? How does queerness continue to shape the ways music spaces are imagined, organised and experienced?

Bringing together club operators, cultural workers and researchers, this session explores the political, social and cultural importance of queer nightlife infrastructures. The conversation asks how queer communities are responding to urban pressures, what new forms of gathering are emerging and how queer approaches to care, programming, accessibility and collective ownership might offer models for the future.
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At a time when many cities are losing dedicated queer venues, this session examines not only what is disappearing, but also what new possibilities are being created.

How do we move from coexisting to collaborating? This session brings together FLINTA* professionals across the music industry to rewire how we connect. Through guided small-group conversations, the session will go beyond the usual networking to explore shared challenges, uncover hidden resources and forge new partnerships. Leave with contacts, fresh perspectives, and a commitment to rewiring the industry.

Classical musicians are trained for precision – but mastery doesn’t automatically create openness to uncertainty. What would change if artistic agency, not artistic selection, became the starting point of how artists are developed? Krisana Locke (somatic & tantric practitioner), Jürgen Grözinger (conductor & sound healer) and Anja Bien (CEO, Hamel Foundation) share insights from IMPROVISO, a research-based mentorship, improvisation and embodied agency.

Sustainability in the music industry has moved past pledges and into operational practice. Festivals are running on systems that did not exist five years ago. Venues are measuring energy use and acting on what they find. Vinyl is being pressed in materials that were experimental a short time ago. New mechanisms are routing money from streaming into environmental work. This panel brings together the people doing that work and asks what is holding at scale.