Beyond The Music is carrying the ethos of Factory Records into a bright and fair future

24 Hour Party People tells the fact and fiction of Tony Wilson, aka Mr Manchester, co-founder of Factory Records and manager of the legendary Haçienda venue – HQ of the Madchester movement, and so consequential that when it closed in 1997, Peter Hook had multiple bass guitars made out of its cigarette-scarred dancefloor. Not only was Wilson instrumental in breaking genre-defining acts including Happy Mondays and Hook’s Joy Division, he was quietly on the frontline of the mp3 revolution – his scrappy Music33 platform beat Apple to the punch – as well as hosting several influential music discovery TV programmes and segments. One, Granada Television’s So It Goes, gave Sex Pistols their first ever TV appearance.

“It was only when I turned probably 30 years old where I really learned how important the legacy is, how lucky I am to have that access and that platform,” Oli tells me. As a child, he remembers thinking his father was the leader of some secret society; walking down the street together, Wilson Sr was constantly stopped for a chat or an autograph. After the extent of his father’s star dawned on him, the younger Wilson decided to continue the mission: lift up great local music and, as a nice byproduct, change the world a little in the process. “I turned around and started using it [my platform] for the benefit of Manchester, for the benefit of its people, and for the benefit of the music scene. That’s what I continue to do – use it to positive effect.”

Enter: Beyond The Music, founded four years ago by Oli alongside Wasted Youth MD Sarah Pearson, and Rose Marley, the CEO of Co-operatives UK. Pressed for time, you might call it the SXSW or Great Escape of the North (god knows the region deserves one). But it’s a lazy comparison, really, because BTM differs from the familiar industry showcase setup in many ways – with more of a focus on problem-solving, real-world application, and the Greater Manchester catchment area. It continues the MO of Tony Wilson’s In The City festival, which ran from 1992 until 2010 and saw industry insiders hash out plans to insulate against future storms while platforming exciting new bands.

Not everyone from up north can afford to travel to London or The Great Escape, Wilson tells me, and pop is fast becoming posher and posher. With its ambitious conference programme, diverse curation, and pay-it-forward scheme – where bigger organisations can buy tickets for lower-income attendees – BTM has become what Best Fit called in 2024 “formidable against the UK capital’s domination of the music industry.”

“It’s a modern iteration of the privilege that my dad had back in the ‘70s and the ‘80s,” Wilson confirms, “so I hope that we can deliver something in line with that kind of legacy.” He’d like every act to walk away with their career furthered in some tangible way. After all, it happened for a scrappy slacker-pop quartet from Manchester. Westside Cowboy had one song released at the time they played BTM in 2024 and subsequently went on to win the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Award, receive glowing reviews from Pitchfork et al., and get invited to open for some of the biggest bands on the circuit: Geese, Black Country, New Road, you name it. We can’t credit all of that to BTM, of course, but the bands that play here go places.

Wilson cites, too, the more granular, collaborative wins that have come out of BTM’s previous editions. When Manchester punk quartet Loose Articles played they managed to connect with two “music enthusiasts” from Marseille who had set up a record label and were working with a well-known rapper in France called NADIR, Wilson explains. They all ended up working on a collaborative release called Marseille, Manchester (In The Area), which was subsequently remixed by a DJ they’d met out here. “That’s the kind of stuff that I like to see coming out of Beyond the Music.”

2024’s edition, like the inaugural 2023 (they skipped last year), was a multi-venue city-centre setup fanning across the Northern Quarter, but its pre-Victorian warehouses were not the most amenable to high-tech retrofits. This year, they packed up and headed to MediaCityUK, in Salford. It wasn’t only the complex’s state-of-the-art studios and extra space that drew the Beyond The Music founders out this way; his white whale has long been Granada Studios. It was a second home when he was a kid (at least when he wasn’t heading to Ibiza with Happy Mondays or working the room as the Haçienda’s youngest attendee).

Granada was where Tony hosted So It Goes in the ‘70s, the show that put the Sex Pistols on the small screen. He later helmed The Other Side of Midnight there, “which platformed the Madchester, Acid House generation of artists, like A Guy Called Gerald and the Happy Mondays,” L explains. “I always wanted access to Granada Television Studios again, which still stands to this day. It’s called Versa Studios now, but it’s just very difficult to get in there. I always felt a little bit sad about that. Earlier this year, to start having conversations with MediaCity and then ultimately to be handed the keys was a dream come true.” It’s another satisfying example of how Tony Wilson’s legacy is being concurrently preserved but progressed.

Throughout BTM, over 100 emerging artists will play across MediaCity, including in many non-traditional spaces such as parts of the Quayside shopping centre. The site expansion tracks with this the idea of Manchester having too much talent and not enough infrastructure to contain it. “When people talk about supporting music, they often talk about supporting the talent pipeline. Well, I don’t think we need to do that here anymore because the pipeline is full and it’s bursting,” Wilson says. “What we need to see is more music industry here to be supporting that, to be allowing it out into the world and facilitating all of the music and art that’s happening here.”

The lineup is stacked with Manchester acts – Another Country $$$$, BEX, SILVERWINGKILLER; around 30% of the bill all told – but BTM didn’t want to set a strict geographical limit. GANS are from the Black Country in the Midlands. Mouth Ulcers are from London, Walt Disco from Glasgow, Wran from Ireland, JayaHadADream from Nottingham – and so on – not to mention the conclusions reached across the conference programme (“summits”) have potential for real, practical, and immediate change across the country and hopefully beyond its borders.

“It’s an inherently Mancunian character,” Wilson says of the ambition. “We are in the world-changing business here in Manchester. We always have been, and Manchester is like a village, but there’s 2.9 million Mancunians here. In terms of manifesting change, it’s part of our character, but it’s also possible here in a tangible sense, because Greater Manchester is a great place to blueprint new ideas, and trial them, and get them out in the world. It’s just the right size to be able to get your hands on, but it’s big enough to do world-changing things. I don’t think that we could do it any other way here, to be honest.”

There’s a timely parallel here with Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s Number 10 of the North and the idea of rebalancing the scales away from London. Burnham, actually one of Beyond The Music’s founding members, will convene the Creative Industries AI Summit – billed as “the first global summit where every content industry agrees a position on AI.”

Wilson elaborates: “We are co-curating, through a series of conversations and responses and votes and actions, a set of principles around the ethical use of AI in the creative industries that we are going to title the Manchester Principles.” He explains that because Manchester has been thrust into the global spotlight – perhaps wielding more clout than ever before – there’s an even greater opportunity to “blueprint ideas here that can then get pushed to a much higher level, and could be taken to government and could rally for real change.”

Another change for BTM this year is the siloing of genres in partnership with guest curators. Wednesday will see their first dedicated metal stage, for example, hosted by the Rock & Metal Alliance and curated with John Robb – musician, author, journalist, and founder-editor of Louder Than War. Elsewhere, BBC 6 presenter Chris Hawkins provided his two cents for Thursday’s indie pop and alternative night, headlined by Tom A. Smith. And Friday leans rap, hip hop, and grime, with Kofi Stone as headliner and co-curation from Amazon Music +44 and talent manager Michael Adex of NQ – the label, publisher, and talent management organisation based in the city.

Every choice BTM made for 2026, every aim they have, lives under an umbrella statement: “Art is a human right.” Back in the day, Tony Wilson went with “Factory own nothing. All our bands have the freedom to fuck off.” But it’s the same core message. Namely: “We believe that artists should have the right to earn their living from their art, and that they should be able to generate careers and livelihoods from their art,” Wilson says. “We believe that the art someone creates is inherently theirs, and that they should have full rights to all of the benefits and the value that comes out of that. I think that we need to fight for the right to our art.”

Before the fight happens, though – before the sleeves-up, elbows-out, nitty-gritty future-making – this year’s edition will kick off with something easier and especially close to home: an anniversary screening of 24 Hour Party People. There will be a keynote conversation with director Michael Winterbottom, producer Andrew Eaton, and Steve Coogan, who played Tony Wilson back in 2002. Incidentally, a 4K restoration of the film was recently completed, so when the idea of 24 years x 24 hours came to Wilson, the other pieces quickly slotted into place.

He’s especially pleased because “the music industry can get – especially when you’re an organiser – quite sterile and scientific and mathematical sometimes. But I prefer rock and roll that I can smell, that I can touch, and that I can taste. And sometimes we miss that. So to start Beyond The Music this year – with all of our high-level conversations that are worldly-wise – I couldn’t think of a better way than with 24 Hour Party People, reminding people what rock and roll is all about.”