Madison is Music
Music is a key social activity to build an inclusive, equitable, and diverse community. The City of Madison is building a reputation as a music and entertainment hub with an enjoyable and welcoming environment. This creates a positive social, cultural, and economic impact for our community.
Music tourism generates substantial economic and cultural benefit to our City. According to the Greater Madison Music Recovery Framework, Madison’s music ecosystem generated $636 Million of economic impact in 2018. It also supported nearly 6,000 jobs, representing 1.86% of the employment in Dane County.
The Madison Arts Commission helps sustain and enrich the live music economy by:
- Supporting co-curricular and extra-curricular music education, particularly through the work of Any Given Child
- Regranting funds from the Room Tax Commission and other sources, as well as grantmaking through their Annual Arts Grants Program
-
Outdoor Music Guide (OMG) and #MadisonIsMusic Social Media Campaign
The #MadisonIsMusic campaign launched in September 2023 to support outdoor music. The campaign has featured over 15 performances by local musicians since it launched, primarily during the first half of September.
The City created the OMG to help musicians understand the different types of permits that may be needed to perform outdoor live music.
Are you a performer who would like to showcase your talent in Downtown Madison? Apply for the Downtown Performance Space Permit. For more information visit the Parks Division website.
-
Make Music Madison
Make Music Madison is a free, one-day, city-wide, distributed music festival held annually on the Summer Solstice (June 21). The goal of the event is to encourage people of all ages, experience levels, and musical persuasions to celebrate the solstice with live music. "Music" is whatever live sound an individual or group wishes to produce, and whatever the hosting space accepts. The festival is inclusionary in terms of genres, ethnicities, styles of music, skill levels of musicians, and in the use of public and private spaces throughout our community. Madison started participating in this global celebration of music on Friday, June 21, 2013. There now are over 1000 communities around the world celebrating the Summer Solstice with a music as part of #makemusicday.
Musicians of all ages, creeds, and musical persuasions-from hip hop to opera, Latin jazz to punk rock perform in public places including sidewalks, plazas, patios, bus transfer points, parks and gardens. Make Music Madison is “performed by anyone, enjoyed by everyone” and brings our community together to experience the power and joy of live music.
