The German Music Information Centre celebrates its tenth anniversary

Ten years on from its foundation, the German Music Information (MIZ) can look back on a record of success. Launched in 1998 under the auspices of the German Music Council, the MIZ has since established itself as an invaluable information facility for all aspects of the German music world.
 
After undergoing a constant expansion of its theme spectrum over the past decade, the Centre is now an elaborate, well-ordered network of routes through the jungle of information on the music scene in Germany. It groups data, facts and background information into central fields and documents the structures and cultural developments that constitute an ever evolving and always unique German musical landscape. Its scale reaches from musical education and training, amateur music, professional musical training and musical performances right through to the media and music business. Most of the information is available from the MIZ online facility - but also in its own publications, an individual advisory service and a specialised library.
 
On the newly designed website at www.miz.org, for instance, you will find information data bases on the infrastructures in the music world with over 10,000 institutions and organisations.  The range is augmented by a data base for advanced and further training facilities in the music sector that records over 2,000 courses, seminars and congresses annually and a data base information on contemporary composers.
 
The centre-piece of MIZ documentation is the Music Almanac. The current, seventh edition 2007/2008 has 1,500 pages divided into 70 chapters and continues to be regarded as the best researched reference work on the German music world.
 
The diversity of material at the disposal of MIZ is based on a unique pool of information on which the Centre can draw. Its foundation is the network of the German Music Council. MIZ cooperates with many other organisations and can also draw on relatively inaccessible sources such as the data material of many research institutes and music associations. MIZ has been a member of the IAMIC since 1998 and is thus anchored in the worldwide networking system that is so essential in an age of global information.