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Marketing is a broad term, and covers a huge range of activities. From researching potential audiences to composing social media posts, choosing your group's 'brand colours' to deciding on ticket prices: these activities all feed into how your group is seen; how potential members, audiences and supporters feel about it; and whether they decide to engage with you.

At Making Music we work with over 3,700 music groups around the country so we have a pretty good overview of what’s out there, how running a music group works, and some of the common challenges that groups face today. Even with so many groups already out there we hear from people interested in starting up new groups all the time.

Orchestra Tax Relief (OTR) is a government initiative that means instrumental groups could receive a payment from HMRC equal to a percentage of their production costs.

Despite being called 'Orchestra Tax Relief':

• the initiative can apply to many types of instrumental group – so don’t be put off if your group is not a traditional orchestra 
• you don’t have to be paying tax to claim it.   

Groups who put on eligible performances can submit a claim to HMRC each year for the payment. 

Being the music director (MD) of a group is a diverse role with lots to think about from conducting, arranging music and developing the group to leading, inspiring and encouraging cohesive working. We have put together a range of guidance, resources and opportunities that MDs might find useful.

One of the three priorities in our five-year-plan (which we started working to in 2017) is to welcome even more kinds of music groups to become part of the Making Music community. 

With a grant from the Arts Council England, we engaged Fiona Goh to look into this for us, and she delivered her report at the end of 2018. 

The prospect of joining a music group committee for the first time can be daunting, so we've put together some resources to help you feel more confident about your role. Or even if you're well settled on a committee, it's always helpful to have guidance to refer to along the way. 

You'll need to have your website login handy to view most of these resources so if you don't have one, please get in touch with us.

There’s a wonderful variety of musical genres being played and sung in towns, cities and neighbourhoods across the UK, so we decided to create introductory guides to some of them. Pick a genre and dive in to find out more and how you can get involved. Or if you would like to submit an introduction to your favourite kind of music, please email us

We know that many of our member groups operate on a tight budget. Working with our corporate members, we’ve collected more than two dozen discounts, subsidies and offers to help our members save on everything from sheet music to booking artists and making recordings. 

This guidance covers licensing and permissions with respect to playing and recording music in copyright.

What is Indian classical music and how is it different to Bollywood or Indian folk music? What are all the different instruments used and where can you go to try listening to it or playing it yourself? Seetal Kaur of member group, the Sitar Music Society, gives us an overview.