The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the way music is created, analyzed, and understood. Music AI has become a focal topic within the broader AI research landscape. Emerging technologies, ranging from music generation and music understanding to multimodal processing, are driving paradigm shifts in both the music industry and music research.
List of Topic Areas
This special issue aims to bring together researchers from diverse academic disciplines and industry to present the latest developments in music processing. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Music signal processing
- Symbolic and audio music generation
- Music information retrieval
- Multimodal data processing with music
- Music processing with large language models (LLMs)
- Human-centered music processing
- Culture-specific music processing
- Datasets, evaluation, and reproducibility in music AI
- Music AI and ethics
Submission and Review Process
All submitted manuscripts will undergo a formal peer-review process (single-blind). The target timeline for the first-round decision is 5 weeks, followed by 2 weeks for revision. The total review duration will typically range from 8 to 12 weeks (depending on one or two revision rounds). Accepted papers will be published open access immediately upon acceptance. Once all papers are published, they will be compiled into an online book featuring an editorial by the guest editorial team. Papers not accepted within the publication window will be transferred to the journal’s regular track for further consideration.
For detailed submission instructions, please see here.
Submission Deadline
March 1st 2026
Guest Editors
Tetsuro Kitahara, Nihon University, Japan, kitahara.tetsuro@nihon-u.ac.jp
Eita Nakamura, Kyushu University, Japan, nakamura@inf.kyushu-u.ac.jp
Jun-You Wang, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan, junyou.wang@mirlab.org
Li Su, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, lisu@iis.sinica.edu.tw
