Feasibility Study On Promoting Slovak Music In Slovakia & Abroad
How to help promote local music?
The new study opens the question of the local music promotion within the digital environment. The Slovak Performing and Mechanical Rights Society (SOZA), the State51 music group in the United Kingdom, and the Slovak Arts Council commissioned Reprex to created a feasibility study which provides recommendations for better use of quotas for Slovak radio stations and which also maps the share and promotion of Slovak music within large streaming and media platforms such as Spotify.
The study proposes best practices for the introduction of mandatory quotas for Slovak radio stations and points out how current recommendation systems used by large platforms such as Spotify, YouTube, or Apple hardly consider local music from smaller countries. Local music stands against competition consisting of million songs from the whole world, and for ordinary Slovak musicians, whose music doesn’t belong to the global hits playlists, it is almost impossible to get recommended by the recommendation systems of large platforms.
Listen Local App for discovering new music
The solution to this problem could be the Listen Local App, built on a comprehensive reference database of local music, which we created as a demo version within the study. The app aims to help listeners discover more local music; the app also presents new and alternative ways for large digital platforms to recommend local artists. Through Listen Local, listeners search for artists and bands based on their taste and the city they are situated in. In this way, listeners can easily search for music by artists from particular cities or from the town they are about to visit. We are releasing today the feasibility study in English and Slovak. We call for an open consultation to evaluate the results of this work and continue developing the Slovak Music Database, the Listen Local recommendation, and the AI validation system.
Check out the Demo Listen Local App. We explain here why.
Database
The Slovak Music Database is connected to Reprex’s flagship project, the Demo Music Observatory, an open collaboration-based demo version of the planned European Music Observatory, currently being further developed in the JUMP Music Market Accelerator Programme supported by Music Moves Europe.
The project website contains the demo version of the Slovak Music Database.
Download the Study
You can download the study herein Slovak or in English.
Next steps
In the next phase of the work, we add further data to our Slovak Demo Music Database and carry out more and more experiments and educational activities to understand how Slovak music can become more visible and targeted. We are also bringing this project into an international collaboration for better utilization of R&D efforts and experiences throughout Europe. This agile project method originated in reproducible scientific practice and open-source software development and allows participation in large projects on any scale: from individual musicians and educators to large research universities and music distributors. Anyone can join in on the effort.
Reprex is looking for further international partners; Reprex is currently part of the Dutch AI Coalition and the European AI Alliance project. SOZA and Reprex are committed to opening this project for international collaboration while ensuring that a significant part of the R&D activities remains in the Slovak Republic.
We are preparing informal, online information sessions for artists, promoters, researchers, and developers to join our project.
Contributors
The Reprex team who contributed to the English version:
- Budai, Sándor, programming and deployment
- Dr. Emily H. Clarke, musicologist
- Stef Koenis, musicologist, musician
- Dr. Andrés Garcia Molina, data scientist, musicologist, editor
- Kátya Nagy, music journalist, research assistant;
and the Slovak version:
- Dáša Bulíková, musician, translator
- Dominika Semaňáková, musicologist, editor, layout.
Special thanks to Tammy Nižňanska & the Youniverse for the case study.