About

Running through Martin Høybye’s work is an existential streak that always puts human life “front and center,” and is also concerned with how we treat the planet and our fellow sentient beings. He is always “out there” trying to make a difference, as a social educator, as an artist, and most recently as an ethnographer on environmental impacts. His eighth album in his own name “Songs in the Key of Collaboration” (2024) is the result of a PhD project where he developed songwriting as an ethnographic method (2023) – and the album includes songs written with participants from South Africa to Denmark.
Martin has always had a strong drive to reach out and share his practice. He started the songwriting programs at the folk high schools Vestbirk and Ry Højskole, where he had Thomas Buttenschøn, Annika Aakjær, Anna Bell, Renée Søndergaard and many others as students.

He later wrote a book based on a method he had developed for teaching, (in use today in secondary and tertiary education, and from folk high schools to music conservatories).

His teaching inspired him to start “Songcrafter Music” (2007-2025) with Roar Amundsen, which helped up-and-coming Nordic artists get a start and a network. Songcrafter Press was established in 2026, spinning off from the work that Martin did with Songcrafter Music for nearly two decades.

Høybye has founded the International Forum for Songwriting, an association that aims to support songwriting as a people-to-people endeavor.

This mindset and ethical orientation also informs the work of Songcrafter Press.