EVENT REPORT

Report on the 23rd International Society forMusic Information Retrieval Conference(ISMIR 2022)
Preeti Rao

Hema A. Murthy

Ajay Srinivasamurthy

IIT Bombay
India

IIT Madras
India

Amazon AlexaIndia

prao@ee.iitb.ac.in

hema@cse.iitm.ac.inajays.murthy@gmail.com

Abstract
The annual International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) conference is theworld’s leading research forum on processing, searching, organizing and accessing musicrelated data. The 23rd International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference(ISMIR 2022) was held from 04–08 December, 2022 at the National Science Seminar Complex,
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India. ISMIR 2022 is the first ever ISMIR conference
to take place in India. Due to the changing global landscape as a result of the COVID-19
pandemic, the 23rd ISMIR conference became the first hybrid ISMIR conference, with bothin-person and remote participants. The scientific program of the single-track conferencecomprised two keynotes, 113 research papers, six tutorials, 13 music pieces and five special
sessions. The conference also included a Women in MIR (WiMIR) plenary session, industry
presentations, a late-breaking/demo session, five satellite events, and multiple social events
that showcased the rich musical and cultural heritage of India. In this report, we present asummary of the event, highlighting some unique challenges we faced organizing the hybrid
conference and reflecting on the event for future improvements.
Date: 04–08 December 2022.
Website: https://ismir2022.ismir.net.

1

Introduction

The International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) represents the largest bodyof scholars, researchers and practitioners in the field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR), aninterdisciplinary research area concerned with processing, analyzing, organizing and accessing
music information. The scope of ISMIR extends across the fields of computer science, musicology,
cognitive science, library & information science and electrical engineering. Our community hence
reflects a diversity of scientific disciplines, seniority levels, professional affiliations, and cultural
backgrounds. The annual ISMIR conference is the world’s leading research forum on processing,searching, organizing and accessing music-related data.
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The 23rd International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2022) was
held in a hybrid format from 04–08 December, 2022 hosted in Bengaluru, India. The ISMIR
conference in India came at a very appropriate time, when we are seeing a steadily growinginterest in MIR in both academic institutions and start-ups in the country. After two editionsof ISMIR conference (2020 and 2021) as fully remote online-only events and the changing global
landscape as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, ISMIR 2022 was proposed to be the first hybrid
ISMIR conference, with both in-person and remote attendees and presenters. While this posed
unique challenges in uncertain and rapidly evolving circumstances, we took this as an opportunity
to bring back the benefits of a physical conference, while maintaining the expanded reach andimproved inclusivity that the past two online editions of the conference had provided.
Similar to past editions, ISMIR 2022 was organized as a single track conference and compriseda technical program of submitted research papers, tutorials, keynote and plenary talks by eminent
speakers in MIR and related areas such as musicology and music cognition. A number of special
sessions were planned on themes that are topical to both academia and industry. Further, satellite
events (such as workshops) that aimed to facilitate and increase interdisciplinary dialogue between
Music Information Science and Humanities were planned for the days around the conference. The
varied themes of these workshops included Music and Health, Music Culture and Identity, Musicand Movement, Music Perception, and Neuromusicology.
The main conference started with a day of tutorials (Sunday), followed by keynotes, paper
presentations and special sessions over the next four days (Monday–Thursday), concluding with alate-breaking/demo session. Social events included the welcome reception on Monday evening, amusic concert on Tuesday evening, a conference banquet on Wednesday evening, and an informal
music jam session on Thursday evening. Satellite events were organized in the week prior andafter the main conference.
This report summarizes the perspective of the organizing team of ISMIR 2022, where we
present the highlights of the hybrid conference with some of our experiences and learnings from theorganization of the conference. In the remainder of the sections, we first describe the considerations
and the design of the hybrid conference format used in ISMIR 2022, followed by a summary of theconference program. We then present some statistics around conference attendance, participationand engagement, following up with some of our thoughts and reflections. Given ISMIR 2022 is
the first ISMIR conference to be held in a hybrid format, we believe that our learnings would be
useful for future organizers of hybrid conferences in general and ISMIR conferences in particular.

2

Hybrid Conference Format and Considerations

ISMIR 2022 was the first hybrid ISMIR conference and the organizing team put in considerable
thought to design the hybrid format of the conference, continually seeking feedback and actively
engaging the ISMIR board and the community in general. We outline some of those considerations
and the design process here.

2.1

Organizational Considerations

Following the tenets of ISMIR community and past conference editions, the hybrid format for
ISMIR 2022 had the following main considerations:
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• ISMIR 2020 and ISMIR 2021 were both virtual (online), but provided very good accessibility
to the conference, increasing the attendance at the conference significantly. We wished tocontinue to make the conference accessible to a large community and improve the reach of
the conference.
• Hybrid conferences are still new and challenging for both organizers and attendees, especially for remote participants. Further, given the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic
related global travel restrictions, we wished to support the ISMIR community by providing
as much flexibility as possible to conference participants to present their work and attend theconference. From a local organizer perspective, the uncertainties associated with a hybrid
conference implied that we needed to adopt agility in planning and continuously involve thecommunity and experts to design a sustainable hybrid format for the conference in 2022 andfuture years.
• The hybrid format is expected to be a preferred format for the next few years, continuing toinclude a significant online component in each edition. Multiple technology tools that allow
us to host an online conference with remote participants are available, but the tools have notyet been integrated well to provide a seamless experience for remote participants. Furthermore, the technology platforms on which the online components of the conference are hosted
are still evolving, and often are based on proprietary solutions involving costly maintenance.
To address these needs, we wished to build a sustainable and reusable technology platform
to host the virtual part of the conference, and include technology needs within the design ofthe hybrid format. Given the emphasis on open research and tools in ISMIR, we wished touse open source tools for this purpose and make them publicly available for future use.
• In alignment with the ISMIR board’s multiple diversity and inclusion initiatives, we wished
to continue to work towards improving diversity at the conference. We further wished toshowcase India’s diverse musical and cultural heritage in both scientific and social programs,
and help to grow and support a sustainable community to drive MIR research in India.

2.2

Designing the Hybrid Format

ISMIR 2022 took place in a hybrid format with a mix of in-person and remote presenters andattendees. At the outset, based on the tenets and considerations of a hybrid ISMIR conference,
we built an International organizing team that was composed of members of the ISMIR communityfrom around the world. The intentional involvement of multiple remote members into conference
organization helped to design the hybrid format effectively considering multiple perspectives, while
also taking advantage of the fact that organization of remote components of the conference did
not need on-site teams, freeing up on-site teams to focus on physical organization needs.
Similar to previous editions, the entire conference (apart from the tutorials) was single-track
and all the scientific program sessions in the schedule were live broadcast. Thus the hybrid
event was conducted with a combination of live sessions at the venue combined with a virtual
platform. The designed format intended to give all attendees an opportunity to interact with allpresenting authors. Note however that because of time zone differences, not all interactions could
be synchronous.
To provide the flexibility to participants to attend the conference remotely or in-person, but
at the same time ensure the conference budgeting is appropriate and sustainable, ISMIR 2022
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introduced author registrations and a two-tier registration fee based on mode of attendance. All
presenting authors registered for the conference as in-person and could choose/change their modeof attendance later. All other participants could choose a registration type based on their modeof attendance (in-person or remote). Remote participants paid a reduced fee. Student registrants
also paid a reduced registration fee. The flexibility allowed participants to choose their mode ofattendance based on evolving circumstances and travel restrictions.
Inclusivity in Hybrid Format: Given that the conference was hybrid with a large fraction ofregistered participants attending the conference remotely, the conference aimed to be inclusive
to all participants, especially to remote attendees. Whenever possible during the live streamed
sessions, questions/comments were first solicited from the remote attendees to compensate forthe absence of the opportunity to interact with the speakers outside the session. Our participants were sensitized about remote attendees’ time zone differences while engaging with them via
asynchronous interaction. The existing ISMIR conference code of conduct was extended in its
applicability to the hybrid format1 .
Technology Tools and Virtual Platform: The virtual platform of the conference was developed with the following primary goals - (1) provide a seamless experience for attendees before,
during and after the conference, and (2) make the virtual conference platform open, sustainable
and future proof, while reducing effort needed for future maintenance and archival. The virtual
conference platform for ISMIR 2022 consisted of a combination of Slack, Zoom and MiniConf. Allregistered participants including in-person participants had full access to the virtual platform.
MiniConf, a publicly available archive of the entire conference program, helped put together andnavigate through the schedule, papers, tutorials and information about all sessions. The conference
Slack workspace served as the primary tool for interaction between participants. The workspace
was also available for a week before to two weeks after the conference to facilitate any interactions
between participants outside conference dates. The Slack workspace supported asynchronousinteractions between participants as well as group huddles. All information that should be available
only with registered participants was shared on the Slack workspace for a restricted reach. The
conference sessions were livestreamed on Zoom. We used Zoom meetings in the conference, which
ensured two-way communication was possible and allowed remote participants to interact (onvideo with audio) with the live audience.
The MiniConf archive for ISMIR 2022 is a modified version of the open source MiniConf platform2
and has been made available for future editions of the conference. The virtual platform design
has been documented and developed in collaboration with the technology volunteer team of the
ISMIR board for continued development. The platform uses standard tools and familiar UI/UX
elements for seamless and familiar access for ISMIR conference participants over the next few
years.
Recording and Archival: All sessions of the scientific program (tutorials, paper presentations,
keynotes, plenary sessions, opening, closing sessions and ISMIR music program) were recorded
and made available on conference Slack for offline viewing after the corresponding session. The
1
2

ISMIR 2022 Conference Code of Conduct: https://ismir2022.ismir.net/codeofconduct
MiniConf: https://www.mini-conf.org/

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recordings were available to registered conference participants for two weeks post the conference.
MiniConf continues to be available and maintained after the conference and serves as the official
archive of the conference3 . The repositories of ISMIR 2022 conference platform4 , conference
website5 and conference proceedings are hosted on GitHub and are openly available.
Tutorials: Tutorial sessions were hybrid, with some attendees and speakers present at the venue
and remaining remote. The tutorial sessions were slightly longer in duration this year to allow for
more interaction given the hybrid mode.
Paper Sessions: Each paper session started with a sequence of 4-minute live presentations (orpresentation video playback for remote presenters) of all the papers assigned to that session. This
ensured that each paper of the conference was assigned a dedicated slot for presentation. Following
this activity, in-person attendees physically visited all the posters set up by the in-person presentersin the poster area. The posters were displayed on poster boards with the presenters available for
immediate interaction. Posters by remote presenters were displayed on a screen in the poster
venue (as a rotating slideshow). All paper and poster PDFs, as well as presentation video (4min), irrespective of whether the presenters were in-person or remote, were available online on
the conference virtual platform MiniConf. Each paper had a dedicated Slack channel, and theinteraction with remote presenters was meant to be asynchronous via the corresponding paper’s
Slack channel. Efforts were made to remind the in-person participants to interact with remotepresenters asynchronously through the corresponding Slack channel.
Keynotes, Plenary and Special Sessions: Both keynote talks were presented in-person fromthe conference venue and live-streamed. The plenary sessions were panels in hybrid mode withsome speakers remote and others physically present at the venue. Physical attendees could interact
directly while remote attendees could watch the live stream and interact with the speakers in theprovided Zoom meeting room format.
Online Special Sessions: These special sessions were fully online and interactive. The meeting
links were announced on Slack to all registered attendees. All the conference participants wereencouraged to join the sessions and participate in discussions.
ISMIR Music Program: Some of the pieces of the ISMIR music program were presented liveat the venue, while the remaining ones were a playback of a pre-recorded video. The complete
session was live-streamed and also recorded for offline watching for participants.
Late-breaking/Demo (LBD) Session: The Late-breaking/Demo (LBD) session in ISMIR conferences is a forum for sharing prototype systems, initial concepts, and early results which may
have not yet fully matured but are of interest to the MIR community. It is also a great entry point
for people who are new to ISMIR to showcase their preliminary work and receive early feedback
from fellow researchers. Attendees of the LBD session could interact with demos or discuss theirthoughts on the latest developments in the field. LBD session has been a mainstay for several
past ISMIR conference editions, but were modified in ISMIR 2022 to suit a hybrid format.
3

https://ismir2022program.ismir.net/
https://github.com/ismir2022program/ismir2022program.github.io
5
https://github.com/ismir2022/ismir2022.github.io
4

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LBD presentations were split into a physical session and an online session. Each LBD extended
abstract had a dedicated Slack channel on the virtual platform with the abstract and poster/video
posted on MiniConf. Both in-person and remote attendees could ask asynchronous questions toremote or in-person presenters via the Slack channel. The LBD posters by in-person attendees
were presented at the LBD session at the venue. Remote presenters used the huddle feature on
the respective Slack channels to present their LBD posters on a video call.
Social Program: The cultural and music events performed at the conference venue were notlive-streamed, however the concert and puppet theater events were recorded and made available
for offline viewing of conference participants.
The hybrid format of the conference described above is expected to serve as a starting templatefor future ISMIR conference editions, with clearly documented processes and tools available tobootstrap and set up a streamlined virtual platform for conference attendees.

3

Conference Program

We summarize the scientific and social program that was part of the conference, providing a short
description of the different sessions. The proceedings of the conference [Rao et al., 2022] arearchived on DBLP and Zenodo. Both the individual papers and the complete proceedings can beaccessed online6 .

3.1

Papers

The core of the ISMIR 2022 Scientific Program is the 113 papers that were presented during theconference. A total of 305 abstracts were registered, of which 264 were submitted as full papers
eligible for review. In keeping with the practices of the previous years, a two-tier double-blind
review process was conducted involving a total of 241 reviewers and 64 meta-reviewers.
In order to promote the study of music traditions that are still under-represented in MIR,
there was a Special Call for Papers on “Cultural and Social Diversity in MIR,” continuing thespirit of ISMIR 2021’s Special Call for Papers on “Cultural Diversity in MIR.” The submissions
to the Special Call underwent the same review process as the papers in the main track, with thesame number of reviews and a similar number of bids per submission, and with meta-reviewers
who were carefully chosen to oversee the review process. In all, 41 papers were submitted to thiscall, of which 14 were accepted.

3.2

Tutorials

The ISMIR 2022 conference program consisted of six tutorials, presented in a hybrid format. There
were three parallel tutorials each in the morning and the afternoon sessions on the following topics:• An Introduction to Symbolic Music Processing in Python with Partitura• Computational Methods for Supporting Corpus-Based Research on Indian Art Music• Designing Controllable Synthesis System for Musical Signals
6

https://dblp.org/db/conf/ismir/ismir2022.html

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• Few-Shot and Zero-Shot Learning for Musical Audio• Deep learning for Automatic Mixing• Trustworthy MIR: Creating MIR applications with values

3.3

Keynotes

ISMIR conference keynotes are traditionally talks by invited experts in areas and topics allied to
MIR. It enables the community to learn more from external speakers and learn about new areas,
tools, technologies and research problems that help extend our understanding of the field. ISMIR
2022 comprised two keynotes titled:• “Evolution of Performance and Aesthetics in Indian Art Music”, by T M Krishna(Karnatik Musician, Author & Activist)• “Adventures of AI: Deepfake and Bias in Audio Processing”, by Richa Singh (Professor and Head, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology
Jodhpur, India)

3.4

Special Sessions

To complement the regular scientific program there were six special sessions, organized as panel
discussions, aimed at covering various trending topics of relevance to the ISMIR community. Twoof the sessions had a hybrid format and three were fully online:• Enhancing music listening with MIR (hybrid)• Enhancing music creativity with MIR (hybrid)• Ethics and MIR (online)• PhD in MIR: Challenges and Opportunities (Online)• TISMIR: the open journal of the ISMIR society (Online)

3.5

Music

ISMIR conferences typically include a music program that compiles a set of music pieces submitted to the conference. The idea of the music program in 2022 was to bring together composers,
technologists and performers, demonstrating application of music information retrieval, computational musicology, human computer interaction, machine accompaniment, call-response, or ethicalhacking. In line with the cultural and social diversity theme of the conference, submissions on
non-Eurogenetic music that could present cultural diversity were also encouraged. The submissions were evaluated on the basis of audio-visual presentation, submission statement, concept
clarity while capturing and retaining audience attention. ISMIR 2022 music session comprised 13
music pieces, and was organized as a session open to the public as a part of outreach to the local
community to encourage more submissions in future ISMIR editions.

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3.6

WiMIR Session

Women in Music Information Retrieval (WiMIR) is a group of people dedicated to promoting therole of, and increasing opportunities for, women in the MIR field. WiMIR has a significant presencein each ISMIR conference, helping to plan and organize different diversity and inclusion initiatives
during the conference. The WiMIR plenary session of ISMIR 2022 was a hybrid session, featuring
a panel of four women researchers across academia and industry who were invited to motivate
the audience about their recent topic of research, while sharing the associated challenges in theirjourney and valuable insights from their experience. The session also featured an interactive
conversation with the audience.

3.7

Industry Presentations

With MIR technology playing a prominent role in the present-day industry, we had ISMIR 2022
sponsors making brief presentations about their company profile, the nature of their R&D and theopportunities available to students interested in the field. The participating sponsors were: Spotify,
Moises, Adobe, Deezer, Utopia music, Pandora, Smule, Yamaha, and Chordify. Apart from this,the conference venue had exhibit booths for sponsors which made for interesting interactions
during the lunch and coffee breaks.

3.8

Late-Breaking/Demo (LBD)

The Late-Breaking/Demo (LBD) session was organized in a hybrid format this year with both
local and remote sessions. A light screening process was carried out for each submission by the
LBD chairs. To clearly distinguish LBD extended abstracts from main conference papers, a newwatermark was introduced on the abstract template. As a part of conference outreach, the chairsreached out to groups working on Indian music inviting submissions. A special feature introduced
this year was to make the local LBD session an open session for students and independent researchers from the local community, allowing them to attend the event for free. This enabled
participants to interact with students, experts and senior members of the ISMIR research community and be introduced to the community in general. Also on display, during the LBD session,
were electronic instruments (such as tanpura and veena) by Radel, a prominent Indian electronic
instruments manufacturer.

3.9

Social Program

Given that the conference returned to a hybrid format after two online editions, the social program
was planned to encourage in-person interactions among the seasoned and new ISMIR participants
after a hiatus due to the pandemic, as well as to showcase the rich music and cultural heritage of India. The ISMIR 2022 welcome reception included a performance of Kalidasa’s playMālavikāgnimitram by Dhaatu, which is a leading Puppet Theater in India based out of Bengaluru7 . Following the show, a street-food themed dinner buffet showcased a variety of culinary
7

https://ismir2022.ismir.net/program/social/dhaatu/

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offerings from across the length and breadth of India. Trivia games organized by the social program
chairs added to the excitement and camaraderie.
The ISMIR 2022 Music Concert featured a Jugalbandi vocal Indian art music concert8 by
Kaustuv Kanti Ganguli and Vignesh Ishwar. The jugalbandi concert showcased the commonalities, differences and nuances of Hindustani and Carnatic music, the two predominant art music
traditions of India. Kaustuv Kanti Ganguli was accompanied by Ravindra Katoti on the harmonium and Tejovrush Joshi on the tabla. Vignesh Ishwar was accompanied by Sayee Rakshith on
the violin and Sumesh Narayanan on the mridangam.
The ISMIR 2022 banquet was held at Rangoli Gardens, which is an open-air museum thatshowcases a model village capturing Karnataka’s distinct rural life in all its quaint glory. The
museum is a fascinating and close-to-realistic sculptural journey into the economy, food habits,
cultural traditions, religious events, recreations, and living conditions of Karnataka. The banquet itself featured the traditional cuisine of the four southern states of India making the entire
experience interesting and edifying for the conference participants.
No ISMIR conference is complete without the informal jam session during the conference. Trueto this custom, a jam session was organized at a venue distant from the conference venue with toand fro transport arranged for the 40+ very enthusiastic participants (who are also musicians!)
who made a memorable evening out of it.

3.10

Satellite Events

In addition to the main conference, five satellite events of ISMIR 2022 were available to participants:
1. WiMIR workshop: The WiMIR Workshop comprised two days of talks by eminent researchers in the WiMIR community, and an opportunity to network, socialize, and havediscussions with peers ahead of the ISMIR conference9 .
2. Music, Mind, Movement and Technology (MMMT) workshop: The MMMT hybrid satellite workshop was an attempt to increase the dialogue between the fields of Music
Information Retrieval and Music Cognition. This hybrid two-day workshop on 2–3 December, 2022 brought together leading international researchers for a series of talks highlighting
interdisciplinary research and facilitating interaction and exchange of ideas around various
themes10 .
3. Indian Music Experience: As a satellite event for ISMIR 2022, we organized an Indianmusic experience workshop on 09 December, 2022. The day-long physical-only workshop
was hosted at the Indian Music Experience Museum (IME), which is India’s first interactive
music museum and involved a museum visit, workshops on Indian art music and a music
exhibition11 .
4. Music HackDay India: The Music Tech Community India is an open community ofmusicians, developers, researchers and artists with an aim to collaborate, share knowledge
and bridge the gap between media, arts and technology as a community. As a satellite event
8

https://ismir2022.ismir.net/program/social
https://wimir.wordpress.com/2022/08/03/wimir-workshop-2022/10
https://ismir2022.ismir.net/satellites/mmmt
11
https://ismir2022.ismir.net/satellites/ime
9

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of ISMIR 2022, the community organized a two-day MusicHackDay India 2022 event on
10–11 December, 2022 that included a hackathon, algorave concert, networking, and panel
discussions12 .
5. CompMusic workshop: CompMusic Workshop 2022 was a 5-day workshop organized from
12–16 December, 2022 at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai as a satellite
event of ISMIR 2022 to introduce the field of Computational Musicology while focusing
on the study of Carnatic Music. By combining theoretical lectures with hands-on labs,
the workshop was aimed at giving the participants the conceptual framework and practical
tools needed to analyze and understand music signals using a variety of computational
methodologies13 .

4

Conference Attendance, Participation and Engagement

This section provides an overview of the conference attendance and some statistics about theparticipation and engagement. We first start by addressing the diversity and inclusion initiatives
that aimed to help improve conference participation and engagement.

4.1

Diversity, Inclusion and Outreach

The ISMIR 2022 conference took a broad view of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). Under theleadership of the conference D&I chairs, in collaboration with the organizing team at large, ISMIR
2022 offered a variety of initiatives intended to make the conference a positive, welcoming, andsupportive environment for a diverse range of presenters and attendees. The initiatives under
ISMIR 2022 D&I included:
1. A pilot New-to-ISMIR paper mentoring program which was designed for members new to
the ISMIR community (early-stage researchers, researchers from areas underrepresented in
ISMIR, and/or researchers from other allied fields who wish to submit their work to ISMIR
conference) to share their advanced-stage work-in-progress ISMIR paper drafts with senior
members of the ISMIR community (mentors who volunteered for the program) to obtain
focused reviews and constructive feedback. The feedback could then be used to revise thedraft and submit it to the conference, to go through the standard review process. There
was an enthusiastic 30 mentee sign-up in the pilot program, from whom 15 papers werementored, leading to 10 of those submitted to ISMIR 2022 and two of the submitted papers
accepted in ISMIR 2022.
2. As a part of commitments to foster D&I and to support early-stage researchers, the ISMIR
society, WiMIR, local organizers provided financial support in terms of registration waivers
enabled by the generous support of the sponsors. Partial or full waivers were extended
to all applicants for both in-person and remote participation. A total of over 75 grants
were provided under different categories such as author grants, WiMIR grants and volunteer
grants.
1213

https://musichackdayindia.github.io/
https://compmusic.upf.edu/workshop-ismir-2022

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(a) Mode of participation(b) Gender

Figure 1. Registered participants at ISMIR 2022: Mode of attendance and gender distribution

3. A WiMIR plenary session of ISMIR 2022, that invited a panel of four women researchers
who are exploring new frontiers and themes in music research, to motivate the audience on
their recent research topic, share the challenges and insights and have an interactive session
with the audience
4. ISMIR 2022 was made accessible to the local community through open sessions, welcoming
the local community to register for free and participate in select sessions.

4.2

ISMIR 2022 in numbers and charts

We present some charts and numbers that provide an overview of attendees and participation in
the conference. Please note that some of these data points were collected on a voluntary basisand hence might not be comprehensive. Adhering to the code of conduct of the conference, all thenumbers reported here are aggregates and no personal identifying information will be reported.
The 113 papers accepted to the conference were contributed by a total of 423 authors (3.8
authors on average per paper) - of them 355 were unique authors. Authors from over 26 different
nationalities contributed papers to ISMIR 2022, as seen from Figure 2. Each paper received
reviews from at least 3 reviewers and a single meta-reviewer (hence at least 4 reviews per paper).
Average reviewer was responsible for reviewing 3.4 papers.
The conference had a total of 548 registered participants, of which 246 attended at least
one tutorial. Of the 548 participants, 253 were students and 295 were non-student registrations.
Further, of these 548 participants, 150 were from the industry and the rest 398 were from academia.
A more granular grouping of participants based on their mode of attendance shows that there were
197 in-person registrations and 322 remote registrations, with around 29 participants undecided
on their mode of attendance by Day-1 of the conference as seen in Figure 1. The figure also shows
the gender distribution of the participants. Of the 197 in-person registrants, over 180 participants
attended the conference in-person in Bengaluru, India. ISMIR 2022 had participants spanning 36
nationalities (based on their affiliation), as seen from Figure 2.
The conference virtual platform was fully accessible by all participants (in-person and remote)from about a week before the conference till two weeks after the conference. The Slack conference
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(a) Paper authors(b) Registered participants

Figure 2. Authors and Participants at ISMIR 2022: Distribution based on nationality

Figure 3. Participation and engagement on Slack during the conference

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workspace had over 200 channels including an active social channel. For each day in the duration
between 27 Nov - 16 Dec, 2022, as proxy metrics of engagement during the conference, we report
the number of active members on the conference virtual platform (Slack) and the number ofmessages posted to different channels in Figure 3. Among the registered participants, we saw over
450 active participants during the conference days (04-08 Dec, 2022), while around 150 participants
continued to stay active and interact with the community up to a week after the conference. The
figure also shows that around 2000 messages a day were exchanged between participants during
the days of the conference. However, the distribution of messages showed a long tailed distribution
with the top 10% of the active members contributing with over 60% of the nearly 10,000 total
messages exchanged, while the bottom 25% sent no messages on the platform. The channels
associated with each paper were visited by an average of 15 unique participants (including theauthor), while the social channel received over 500 unique participant visits.

5

Reflections and Summary

We summarize some of our reflections from the conference based on anecdotes, quantitative dataand our experience organizing the event.
New in ISMIR 2022: The organizing team designed several new elements in hybrid ISMIR
2022. The continued tradition of inviting Keynote speakers from allied areas was well received,and provided the community with additional perspectives beyond common MIR areas of work.
The format of paper sessions ensured that each paper got a dedicated slot to present, which is apossibility within a single track conference. The pilot New-to-ISMIR paper mentoring program waswelcomed enthusiastically by the community and is likely going to be a mainstay of D&I initiativesof future ISMIR conferences. The open LBD sessions provided a glimpse of MIR related work to
the external community who could not participate in the whole conference due to the cost andtime involved. The social program was one of the major highlights of the conference, and the
choice and spread of the events was highly appreciated and well received. The varied satellite
events, especially the Indian Music Experience workshop provided unique opportunities to thecommunity to explore facets of computational analysis of Indian art music and other allied fields
of MIR.
Hybrid format: The hybrid format of the conference is likely to continue for a few more years
given the inclusive nature of it and the significant reach it provides to the community. However,some challenges continue to exist due to the distributed nature of the hybrid conference that allows
for both in-person and remote participation. The lack of geographical co-location and differencesin time zones are not problems that can be overcome, but we can mitigate their impact, especiallyfor remote attendees. The inclusive hybrid format of the conference ensured we provided as
seamless an experience for remote and in-person participants as possible. However, engagementof remote attendees continues to be a major challenge despite the availability of technology tools.
Anecdotal evidence from participants indicated that the conference would benefit greatly if all theauthors of the papers and presenters are present in-person, while remote participation is limited
to attendees only. This ensures that authors and presenters are available for a fixed time at theconference and engage better, increasing the possibility of interactions. Despite these observations,
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we anticipate that the possibility of remote participation at conferences will continue to be provided
because the advantages of the improved reach and accessibility outweigh the concerns about lackof engagement.
Continuity: The tools and technology platform built for ISMIR 2022 were built with openly
available tools to be sustainable and well documented to make it easy to set up. This is expected
to provide an easy way to bootstrap the technology platform in future ISMIR conference editions
by building on existing tools and processes. The ISMIR board also has a technology volunteer
team to provide a roadmap and sustainably transition technology tools across editions of theconference.
Indian presence at ISMIR 2022: India has a small but significant MIR presence. Whilethe number of Indian participants at the conference was relatively small due to the small-sizedresearch community in the country as well the costs involved, we ensured we provided all necessary
opportunities for students to volunteer for the conference and benefit from their interaction withthe community. There was significant Indian participation in the satellite events and the LBD
sessions. We disseminated the event throughout the country to raise awareness and provide
visibility to the conference. We plan to build on the impetus provided to MIR in India after ISMIR
2022 by organizing distinguished lectures, winter/summer schools on MIR on a regular basis toencourage further growth. We will continue to engage musicians, music listeners, musicologists,neuro-scientists and music technologists, and bring them together to establish multi-disciplinary
collaborations and build a sustainable MIR community in India. We propose to organize multiple
events to involve local communities and enhance our outreach activities, with the aim of bringing
in greater engagement and integration of the Indian community with ISMIR.
On the whole, ISMIR 2022 was a successful event and was well received by both in-person
and remote attendees. We do hope that the ISMIR conference will return to India in the future,
while growing in its reach and topics to include more music traditions around the world and moreinterdisciplinary collaborations between the diverse communities involved. ISMIR 2023 is planned
to be organized in Milan, Italy from November 05–09, 2023 14 .

Acknowledgements
The conference program was made possible thanks to the hard work of many people, including
the ISMIR 2022 conference chairs, the joint host institutes of IIT Bombay, IISc Bangalore andIIT Madras, the administrative staff of the National Science Seminar Complex (NSSC) at IISc,
ISMIR Board members and the many reviewers and meta-reviewers from the program committee.
We thank the large team of student volunteers who came from different universities across India
and the world to contribute to the success of the conference. We would also like to thank oursponsors, whose generous support made this conference possible.
ISMIR 2022 organizing team: https://ismir2022.ismir.net/team14

https://ismir2023.ismir.net/

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References
Preeti Rao, Hema A. Murthy, Ajay Srinivasamurthy, Rachel M. Bittner, Rafael Caro Repetto,
Masataka Goto, Xavier Serra, and Marius Miron, editors. Proceedings of the 23rd International
Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, ISMIR 2022, Bengaluru, India, December
4-8, 2022, 2022. ISBN 978-1-7327299-2-6.

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