ISMIR’s annual Conference is the world's leading research forum on processing, searching, organising and accessing music-related data. The revolution in music distribution and storage brought about by digital technology has fuelled tremendous research activities and interests in academia as well as in industry. The ISMIR Conference reflects this rapid development by providing a meeting place for the discussion of MIR-related research, developments, methods, tools and experimental results.

Its main goal is to foster multidisciplinary exchange by bringing together researchers and developers, educators and librarians, as well as students and professionals.

ISMIR 2012 will feature introductory and in-depth tutorials, presentations of research papers and posters as well as a musical concert programme to encourage the use of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) techniques in the creation of new music and to explore music that can suggest novel ideas for research in the MIR field.

Fabien Gouyon and Carlos Guedes will coordinate the organisation of the event at INESC TEC in collaboration with the TNSJ (the São João National Theatre). ISMIR 2010 is also supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), the University of Porto and the University Católica Portuguesa.