Experience Economy @TUNI at Music x Media 2026
Miika Salmi Lipiäinen, Head of the Experience Economy @TUNI programme and Professor of Practice in Experience Economy, and Heini Merkkiniemi, Festival Director and Doctoral Researcher in the programme, participated in Music x Media, held in Tampere on 1–2 October 2026. The event brought together professionals from the music, media and events industries to discuss developments in the field, emerging phenomena and future opportunities.
Miika hosted two discussions exploring the music and cultural industries through the lens of experience economy research. In What Can We Learn from Different Fan Cultures?, Riikka Turtiainen, Anna Leskinenand Katri Mattsson discussed the characteristics and evolution of fan cultures. The conversation explored what different fan communities can learn from one another and the opportunities associated with community-building and engagement.
The second discussion, Birth of Cool in AI Age: LLMs as Dictators of Taste, brought together Miika and Sanni Pöntinen, Doctoral Researcher at Tampere University, to examine how large language models influence taste and cultural valuation. The discussion explored how AI can participate in taste-based judgements and what implications this may have for cultural markets, consumption and value formation.
The Music x Media programme also featured a timely panel discussion titled Values as a Compass for Leadership, moderated by Heini Merkkiniemi. The discussion brought together Pauliina Valtasaari, Sami Helle, Annina Pikkumäki and Siciid Mohamed. Pauliina opened the discussion with an introduction exploring how organisational values can be translated from strategic statements into everyday leadership practices. The panel then examined how organisational values are reflected in decision-making, interactions with employees and workplace practices. Particular attention was given to the role of values in guiding leadership through difficult decisions and situations where different objectives may conflict. This theme is also relevant to the experience economy: building a sustainable and inclusive experience economy requires values to be reflected in the concrete practices of organisations and in interactions between people.
Music x Media provided a valuable opportunity to bring research perspectives into discussions within the music and cultural industries and to strengthen dialogue between industry professionals and the Experience Economy @TUNI programme.
Read more: Music x Media 2026 Programme
