We are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for a new Special Collection in the Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (TISMIR) titled: “Language-Centric Music Information Retrieval”.
This special collection focuses on Music Information Retrieval (MIR) research informed by language-centered modeling. We invite contributions that explore how concepts and methods from Natural Language Processing (NLP) and large-scale language models can support the analysis, representation, retrieval, and generation of music.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
– Tokenization and representations for symbolic music and audio
– NLP for music-related text (lyrics, metadata, reviews, etc.)
– Language-informed tagging, classification, and semantic understanding
– Retrieval and recommendation, including query-by-description and conversational search
– Music generation and co-creation, including text-conditioned generation and iterative editing workflows
– Language-guided audio and music production, such as mixing, mastering, and sound design
– Knowledge resources for MIR, including ontologies, knowledge graphs, and entity linking
– Evaluation and human factors, including quality assessment, human feedback, creativity, bias, and cultural representation
– Trust, ethics, and transparency, including synthetic content detection and copyright-related considerations
– Long-context modeling of musical structure and form
– Multimodal methods involving text, symbolic music, and audio (as relevant to the collection’s focus)
Guest Editors:
– Anna Kruspe (Lead Editor), Munich University of Applied Sciences
– SeungHeon Doh, KAIST
– Elena Epure, Idiap Research Institute
– Yinghao Ma, Queen Mary University of London
– Arthur Flexer, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz
– Li Su, Institute of Information Science
– Ruibin Yuan, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Submission Guidelines:
– Note: Please specify in your cover letter that the submission is for the Special Collection “Language-Centric Music Information Retrieval”.
– Word Limit: Maximum 8,000 words.
– Pre-notification: If you plan to submit, please let us know via email at anna.kruspe@hm.edu to assist our planning.
For detailed formatting guidelines and information regarding extensions of previously published workshop research, please refer to the TISMIR website. We look forward to receiving your innovative contributions!
Best regards,
On behalf of the Guest Editors
On 4-8 May 2026, several AIM researchers will participate at the 
On 23-27 April, AIM researchers will participate at the