Open Music Europe

Open Music Europe brings together music industry stakeholders and researchers from 11 EU countries and Ukraine. Our consortium recognises that placing European music ecosystems on a more competitive, fair, and sustainable footing requires evidence-based policymaking, business planning, and accuracy.

We provide the data needed for these actions. Using transparent methods and tools, OpenMuse maps the policy and data landscape; bridges data gaps; and empowers stakeholders and policymakers to take data-driven actions. Our project is grounded on principles of open policy analysis, open science, and open-source software development. We work with stakeholders to identify data gaps on the EU, national, and regional levels; co-create indicators and methods for bridging them; develop free software tools for data collection and analysis; and report not just our findings, but every step taken to reach them.

This is the logic behind our Open Music Observatory (OMO, developed from the earlier CEEMID and the Digital Music Observatory concept), an open-source platform that provides 360-degree intelligence on the music industry by integrating numerous data sources. The OMO is highly automated, providing “living policy documents” that refresh when the backend datasets are updated: these datasets include official statistics on music goods and services; data on musical participation via pan-European surveys, rights-holder data voluntarily shared by industry partners, and streaming service data sampled using novel algorithms developed by our consortium. Using the OMO and our open-source software, music MSMEs without technical departments or expertise will be able to access and analyse open data; model volume and value, including of zero-price uses; create better business models; and generate corporate social responsibility and sustainability reports; all at a fraction of current costs. We validate these tools in four pilot studies that will bring concrete benefits to stakeholders within the project lifespan.

Open collaboration

Our project is based on open collaboration. Our proposal, will provide us with resources to supply further music businesses, music civil society organizations and researchers with high-quality data (during the duration of the project for free.) The open collaboration means that

• we will ask all representative music organizations to join our advisory board and set priorities so that we can work for the benefit of all the European Music Ecosystem.
• our improved valuation, ESG/SDG reporting, diversity promotion tools will be open for national public organizations and businesses to use;
• for-profit and non-profit organizations who are not members of our Consortium can solve in the form of public use case studies some of their valuation/ESG; reporting/diversity measurement issues provided that they pay for their own project management and translations costs;
• our cases studies intended to improve the economic situation, resilience and diversity problems of organizations in the Consortium can be freely replicated with our online tools, live policy documents, and our Open Data Observatory.

See existing business partners, civil society & social enterprise partners and academic partners.

The project’s scoping aim is to create an open, scalable data-to-policy pipeline for European music ecosystems.

• MAP the policy and data landscape all over Europe, but with a focus on select countries
• BRIDGE data gaps with open data that anybody can use
• EMPOWER stakeholders and policymakers to take data-driven actions

The objectives are designed to advance the state of the art with regard to data collection, policymaking, and business practices in these three pillars of the music industry. Both the objectives and the outputs will be optimised for transferability to other cultural and creative industries.

MAP the policy and data landscape all over Europe

“Develop indicators to better detect the performance of the European music sector and its contribution to economic and social development, as well as to sustainability”

1. Develop policy-relevant indicators for the total economic value of music
2. Develop policy-relevant indicators for music diversity and circulation
3. Develop policy-relevant indicators for the societal impact of music ecosystems, within an SDG framework
4. Develop policy-relevant indicators for the resilience of music ecosystems, within an SDG framework.

“Provide new/improved methodologies for capturing the economic and societal value of music”

1. Develop new software for rendering fragmented and unharmonised/unprocessed data usable
2. Implement data-sharing cooperation to make hidden and restricted data accessible
3. Develop new survey methods for capturing scarce data.

These methodological innnovation build on the previous collaboration among many of the OpenMuse Consortium partners. For examples, see the Publications section of the Digital Music Observatory page.

BRIDGE data gaps with open data that anybody can use

“Promote standardised data collection about the music (sub-)sector(s) to measure the contribution of the EU music sector to the whole economy”

1. Define and demonstrate best practices on harmonisation of public data (e.g., Eurostat)
2. Define and demonstrate best practices on harmonisation of proprietary data (e.g., CMO data)
3. Create and run standardised enterprise surveys suitable for music MSMEs, that capture the contribution of numerous small players to the economy
4. Enable and promote collection of streaming service data using novel sampling strategies.

See data we can offer below.

“Provide an estimation of the impact of music participation to the society”

1. Create and run standardised Cultural Access and Participation surveys
2. Create and run valuation models that incorporate zero-price music use (e.g., home copying, piracy)
3. Create and run valuation models that synthesise economic and non-economic societal values of music participation
4. Report and visualise music valuation data and models in an automated, continually-updated online dashboard.

EMPOWER stakeholders and policymakers to take data-driven actions

“Increase the transparency of the music industry, in particular the online/streaming business”

1. Publish open-source software and econometric models for streaming music data valuation (demonstrated for at least one major provider and transferable to others)
2. Build awareness of industry conditions through regular face-to-face and online dissemination, communication, and exploitation activities

“Provide policymakers with effective tools for measuring and enhancing the impact of EU policy making”

1. Develop an open-source online dashboard that continually aggregates and reports disparate music data, with “plug-and-play” functionality vis-a-vis national databases
2. Implement transferable pilot projects on music valuation (BG/HU), diversity (SK), social and environmental sustainability (IT), and technical innovation (DE)
3. Release policy reports and recommendations on Music Economy; Music Diversity and Circulation; Music, Society, and Citizenship; and Music Technology.

Our results will be published in the Open Music Observatory, which will follow the specificaiton of the Feasibility Study on the Establishment of the European Music Observatory.

Data that we can offer

By providing continually updated data on five industry pillars – innovation, music and society, music economy, music diversity and circulation, and music policy – we will accurately capture the economic and social value created by the sector, as well as providing stakeholders with data-driven means of maximizing this value.

• For copyright and neighbouring rights-holders and their organizations: Value of music, euro value of the value gap, private copying, privacy—we have data and make estimates with all known music value estimation techniques.
• For live music organizations: Pan-European audience surveys; demographic comparisons of all European audiences; attendance predictions, attendance profiling.
• For granting authorities: we have the world’s largest survey-based dataset on how musicians work and live; we create ex ante needs assessment and grants evaluation indicators and ex-post grant evaluation indicators.
• For labels and music publishers: we make big data understandable; we create price and volume indexes of streaming markets; we tell you about price developments and selection probabilities in different cities and countries; we understand the biases of the Spotify and YouTube algorithms; and we measure (meta)data problems and offer scalable solutions.
• For music export offices: we measure domestic and foreign market shares in streaming; we create actionable key performance indicators; and we do geographical targeting.

Service Development, Project Management, Coordination and Dissemination

• Reprex is the originator of the OpenMuse project which builds on the achievements of the former CEEMID project, and provides leadership in WP Dissemination with building the Open Music Observatory, a full-fledged, open science-based statistical service that can complement the Eurostat Rest API and the future European Music Observatory on the basis of the Digital Music Observatory prototype validated in Yes!Delft AI+Blockchain Lab and the JUMP European Music Market Accelerator.
• Sinus-Institut, (DE) an innovative market- and policy research SME is the coordinator of the project, and provides leadership on WP Music, Society and Citizenship with promoting best, harmonized practices of the measurement of cultural access and participation.
• Synyo, (AT) an innovative research company is participating in the coordination and dissemination of the project.

Business partners

• SOZA (SK), the representative organization of Slovak composers and lyricists, and the global composer community within Slovakia, will develop an impact assessment with us on the promotion of the Slovak music in radios (with local content quotas) and streaming platforms, and assist partners in various diversity related actions. SOZA is a founding partner of the CEEMID project.
• HearDis! (DE), a German innovative music tech company is participating in building uses case of uses of music that harmoniously fit into the local music ecosystems and do not colonize lucrative uses of in-store and other public performance.
• Aloaded (SE), a 100% independent Stockholm-based digital distributor is participating in the development of new streaming market transparency indexes. We will create stock-exchange like streaming price, volume indexes to increase the transparency and business development of small labels and self-released artists.
• Artisjus (HU), the representative organization of Hungarian composers and lyricists, and the initiator of the CEEMID project, together with SOZA, will assist Musicautor to re-valuate the use of music in Bulgaria in a way that can be scaled to any European country, and try to improve probably the poorest markets revenues similarly to the good results of the former CEEMID in Hungary and Slovakia.
• Musicautor (BG), the representative sister organization of Bulgarian rightsholders, will validate the valuation methodologies of our projects with putting them in use, trying to replicate the double-digit growth from Hungary and Slovakia.

Our observatory follows the agile open collaboration method from open-source software development, and it has a triangular approach. We believe that data which is created by peer-reviewed, open algorithms, and thus open for review from the business, policy and scientific community is the best addition to your business proprietary data. By sharing data with us, we can build world-class KPIs that give you a competitive edge in the data-driven music industry.

For labels and music publishers: we make big data understandable; we create price and volume indexes of streaming markets; we tell you about price developments and selection probabilities in different cities and countries; we understand the biases of the Spotify and YouTube algorithms; and we measure (meta)data problems and offer scalable solutions.

Civil Society & Social Enterprise partners

• ICMP (Global, EU), the “global voice for music publishing,”, will be our partner to fill the data gaps identified by Feasibility Study on the Establishment of the European Music Observatory related to the publishing revenue stream of the European music business.
• Music Innovation Hub (IT), an Italian social enterprise, is validating our sustainability reporting tool.
• Music Exchange Fund (LT), a Lithuanian NGO that helps the promotion of Lithuanian artists abroad, will utilize the trustworthy AI and data management system originally developed by SOZA and Reprex to build a similar system in Lithuania and Ukraine.
• Music Export Ukraine (UA), a Ukrainian NGO promoting the music export of Ukraine, will further develop the Ukraine Music Industry Databases and build a similar application to the Music Exchange Fund.

We want to demonstrate that we apply world-class research and the best and most data available to solve policy problems. If you bring your policy problem into an open collaboration with our Digital Music Observatory, you can rely on the expertise of eminent researchers in the field of economics, law, royalty finance, statistics, and valuable data. We want to demonstrate that we can offer the best value for money in data.

We believe that our offering is particularly valuable for music policy organizations who would like to be actively involved in the shaping of the future Feasibility Study For The Establishment Of A European Music Observatory. Our Digital Music Observatory already contains much of the data gaps identified by stakeholders. We have 7 years of working experience in the music industry, and we are familiar with data sharing and data governance solutions that manage well the conflicts of interests and strategic worries of the industry.

For copyright and neighbouring rights-holders and their organizations we can create music (royalty/tariff) valuations, euro value of the value gap, private copying, privacy – we have data and make estimates with all known music value estimation techniques. For live music organizations: Pan-European audience surveys; demographic comparisons of all European audiences; attendance predictions, attendance profiling. For granting authorities —we have the world’s largest survey-based dataset on how musicians work and live; we create ex ante needs assessment and grants evaluation indicators and ex-post grant evaluation indicators. For music export offices we can measure domestic and foreign market shares in streaming; we create actionable key performance indicators; and we do geographical targeting.

Academic partners

• Turku Data Science Group (FI)at the University of Turku will lead the WP Innovation and build an ecosystem of open source applications within the rOpenGov open collaboration platform with Reprex that enable the music industry to create a self-service, Open Music Observatory that will produce statistical products in a similar quality, form, and service level like the Eurostat Rest API.
• Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam, will lead the WP Economy of Consortium, including scaleable, standardized valuations that can be placed in use anywhere in Europe, conduct research in the market value of metadata, and provide leadership in economic methodologies.
• Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (IT) of the University of Pisa will lead the WP Diversity and provide leadership in creating methodologies, indicators and open policy recommendations that can support the circulation of European music and the measurement and promotion of local and national repertoires in broadcasting, streaming and retransmission.
• University of Economics in Bratislava (SK) will develop indicators and validate our results in a national policy setting.

We provide scientific access (with priority given to our Consortium partners) to highly valuable quantitative datasets in music, particularly nationally representative audience surveys, nationally representative music creator surveys, and large music streaming data. We provide know-how and data science infrastructure that facilitates data collection via surveys or big data by utilizing pre-existing open science or open government sources.

We will provide researchers with data according to their needs, and make sure that their quantitative research will have the best scientific and policy impact. Our goal is to ensure our datasets meet higher quality standards than governmental statistics, and that they are the most findable open science resources in music globally.

Data Coverage

Our research project contributes to all of the expected outcomes of the call. Our ambition is to develop an open science and open data service which complements the existing statistical service of Eurostat. In partnership with key music industry and policy partners, we are going to fill approximately 41 data gaps within the policy context of Music Moves Europe, as identified by the Feasibility Study for a European Music Observatory, with about 120 high-value indicators. We will develop key performance indicators for music businesses and policy indicators to “better detect the performance of the European music sector and its contribution to economic and social development, as well as to sustainability.”

We believe that existing data availability is better than that described in the Feasibility study. As stated in this final report, the 2019 Open Data Directive further extended the availability of re-usable public sector information (PSI) with open science data. In PSI, open government data, and open science data, there is a huge potential to fill in the data gaps without new data collection—the fact that data can be reused instead of being recollected is the main aim of the directive. These open data sources are legally open but are not accessible without further investment; our Consortium wants to make this investment, and produce about 50% of all the data needs of the future European Music Observatory.

The Digital Music Observatory, which was called CEEMID at the time of the creation of the Feasiblity Study, has 7 years of experience in filling in data gaps with open data. It has created metadata maps to more than 1000 indicators, covering almost all of the data gaps in the Feasiblity Study. We know where to locate data, and now we have to invest in processing, validating, documenting, and making it available for the European music sector.

Pillar 1: Music Economy

In the case of Pillar 1 – Music & Economy, we are usually able to locate the source of the data, and we have some experience in processing the data and bringing it to light. We have mapped many perceived data gaps to the various data harmonization projects of GESAC and CISAC, and we will seek cooperation with these organizations and their members to find a secure and voluntary way to retrieve the data.

In other cases, we will rely on the 2019/1024/EU Open Data Directive to access, process, document, and disseminate the data.

The only data gap that we do not intent do address is the “impact of the non-profit sector”.

Pillar 2: Music Circulation & Diversity

We will address the music circulation problems with our WP big data. Together with our leading statistical experts, data scientists, and reproducible research experts we will create sampling techniques that allow to make representative indicators from streaming data. Streaming data is largely accessible, but not in a representative manner. Using advanced statistical methodologies like inverse reverse sampling—which is often used in quantitative finance to analyze large problems—we will create representative data following our pioneering work made in the Central European Music Industry Report and later the Digital Music Creators’ Project initiated by the UK Intellectual Property Office.

We will address diversity issues with recycled and harmonized surveys.

Pillar 3: Music & Society

We will mainly rely on the integration of existing, but fragmented and not well-formatted data, and existing, but not processed and not published data to create pan-European indicators for the music and society section.

Pillar 4: Music & Innovation

1. We will connect to several innovation topics in music by providing research, data, and evidence. Building on the work of the Blockchain & Society research project of our Consortium member, the Institute for Information Law IViR at the University of Amsterdam, we will address issues related to NFT and blockchain technologies in music.

2. Connecting to the work of various music stakeholders in Finland, we will experiment with the safe data sharing of confidential data, avoiding the extreme pitfalls of ‘radical openness’ and ‘closed data’. With the University of Bologna, and eight years of experience in sensitive data sharing with the Digital Music Observatory (formerly: CEEMID), we will create various statistical methods to create anonymized and synthetic datasets that do not endanger business or private data.

3. We are going to design indicators and carry out a landscape mapping with Music Tech Europe, a new organization that aims to become the representative of music startups and music ecosystems in the European Union.