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Can Online Music Platforms Be Fair? An Interdisciplinary Research Manifesto

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• Published: 07 February 2024
• Volume 55 , pages 249–279, ( 2024 )

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• Giuseppe Mazziotti 1 &
• Heritiana Ranaivoson 2  

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 26 February 2024

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In this article we present a manifesto for research into the complex interplay between social media, music streaming services, and their algorithms, which are reshaping the European music industry – a sector that has transitioned from ownership to access-based models. Our focus is to assess whether the current digital economy supports a fair and sustainable development for cultural and creative industries. The manifesto is designed to pave the way for a comprehensive analysis. We begin with the context of our research by briefly examining the de-materialisation of the music industry and the critical role of proprietary algorithms in organising and ranking creative works. We then scrutinise the notion of “fairness” within digital markets, a concept that is attracting increasing policy interest in the EU. We believe that, for “fairness” to be effective, the main inquiry around this concept – especially as regards remuneration of music creators – must be necessarily interdisciplinary. This presupposes collaboration across complementary fields to address gaps and inconsistencies in the understanding of how these platforms influence music creation and consumption and whether these environments and technologies should be regulated. We outline how interdisciplinary expertise (political science, law, economics, and computer science) can enhance the current understanding of “fairness” within Europe’s cultural policies and help address policy challenges. The article details how our research plan will unfold across various disciplinary hubs of a Horizon Europe project ( Fair MusE ) that aims to explore the challenges and opportunities of today’s digital music landscape. The plan culminates in the integration of these hubs’ findings to deliver “key exploitable results”.

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1 Introduction

The exponential growth of social media and streaming services, and the fast-growing influence of their algorithms and data infrastructures, raise questions as to whether today’s digital economy will allow the cultural and creative industries (CCIs), and especially the music ecosystem, to develop in a fair and sustainable way, at least for most authors and performers. The digital revolution has done much more than just simplify content dissemination and enable content production to reach unprecedented scales. Digital technologies have broadened the notion of “creation” itself, which ranges from traditional works of composers, performers, record labels, and broadcasters to new forms of musical and music-based creativity that digital settings, social media, and artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled. These new forms and trends include the streaming of live music events and home-made creations that became even more appealing and diffused due to the COVID-19 health emergency and the ensuing long-term restrictions on the performing arts. In this scenario, the commercial power of a handful of very large tech companies increased significantly. These companies can be identified, at least in part, with the owners of the “very large online platforms” (VLOPs) Footnote 1 under Art. 33 of the DSA and with providers of core platform services according to the notion embodied in the DMA. Footnote 2 The ability of these companies to control access to unprecedented volumes of creative works and, at the same time, creators’ ability to reach and develop potential audiences raises existential questions for Europe’s policymakers and the CCIs, including players such as radio, TV broadcasters, and the market for live performance exploitations.

This paper takes the form of a manifesto to advocate a new, interdisciplinary research approach that can remedy the shortcomings of a purely doctrinal and scientifically segregated (i.e. “silo-like”) analysis of EU cultural and industrial policies in the music sector and of their effective impact in today’s platform- and algorithm-dominated economy. In our view, only a well-designed combination of distinct and complementary disciplines can test methodologically and verify empirically whether the EU’s policy changes in copyright law and recent EU regulations (Digital Services Act – DSA – and Digital Markets Act – DMA) seeking to curb the exceptional power of VLOPs are justified and suitable for today’s internet. To this end, we authored a research proposal and built an EU-wide interdisciplinary group of academics and industry partners whose consortium – Fair MusE Footnote 3 – received funding from the EC/REA’s Horizon Europe program. The group’s principal investigators are experts in the fields of law, economics, political science, and computer science and have a consolidated leadership in developing projects of international relevance and solid connections with policymakers and industry.

The predominantly academic character of this consortium Footnote 4 aims at guaranteeing the highest quality and independence of the proposed research. The consortium composition seeks to prevent conflicts of interests which would inevitably arise in our view if, due to the project’s mission, the consortium incorporated industry partners (such as a major record publisher or label, an online music service provider, or a social media platform owner) that would pursue their own corporate interests. This could hinder, or even distort, the results of the empirical research concerning data and confidential information Fair MusE has envisaged. To prevent this risk while still being able to engage in “co-creation” of tools for policymakers and the music industry together with CCIs, our consortium incorporates industry partners which have an interest in promoting fairness in music ecosystems: (i) an Italian composers’ collecting society (SIAE), which is broadly representative of Italian composers and whose repertoire is strong at the local level but not mainstream at the international level; Footnote 5 and (ii) a UK-based company (Verifi Media Ltd) that is currently leading the market development of rights data management services for the music industry, including data collaboration and sharing, which are a prerequisite for market transparency for both creators and exploiters of digital music. Footnote 6

Our manifesto is based on Fair MusE’s main research proposal and puts forward a novel approach to address the European idea of a “fair” digital society and of fair digital markets in the music sector in an extensive and integrated manner. Such a necessity is even more compelling at the European level if we consider that the notion of “fairness” is currently being used in several policy areas. Footnote 7 Considering that fairness is designed to support cultural creation in today’s fast-changing, very broad, and increasingly AI-dominated music ecosystems, independent research should give this concept a more tangible and measurable dimension. Our manifesto and its potential outcomes aim at pursuing this goal and making policymakers, stakeholders, and the general public more aware of the risks that creators’ lack of appropriate remuneration as well as platforms’ algorithm-based and non-transparent exploitations of creative works pose to music’s sustainability and diversity.

The manifesto is organised as follows. Section 2 briefly summarises how the music industry has progressively de-materialised over the past three decades and gone from ownership-based to access-centred business models where streaming services and social media platforms organise and rank sound recordings on the grounds of their (secret) algorithms. Section 3 lists complementary disciplines and methods that are necessary to perform effective and independent research activities focused on whether music platforms can function fairly, especially for music creators. This section identifies gaps in the literature and shows how interdisciplinary research can go beyond the state of the art and help resolve persisting policy dilemmas in this field. Section 4 describes the main contents and purposes of our manifesto while drawing on the emerging notion of fairness in EU music policymaking and other policy fields. Section 5 details how we see our ideas being put into practice in Fair MusE’s research proposal and concrete set of activities.

2 Evolution of the Music Industry and Its Current Dependence on Platforms

The music industry, more than other sectors, has gone through radical changes in the past two decades. These have been even more difficult to face because of the extreme fragmentation of the rights, business interests, and artistic prerogatives that characterise the related creative communities. When the internet first emerged in the mid-1990s, the end-to-end architecture of this new medium and the fast development of file-sharing software enabled internet users to access and exchange large amounts of recorded music without intermediation. Free and uncompensated file sharing threatened the survival of the music industry for almost a decade, given that it had the potential to replace physical formats like CDs, which were the core business of the industry. Footnote 8 Since the early 2000s, proprietary online platforms have dramatically changed content distribution models and made music materials ubiquitous in the online environment. Although unauthorised file-sharing continued, becoming even more efficient and sophisticated, an unstoppable evolution of the internet infrastructure in terms of bandwidth and connectivity enabled companies to launch on-demand music stores, such as iTunes, which Apple released in 2001. iTunes was the first service that made digital music marketable by successfully creating its own ecosystem based on proprietary technologies for computers and portable devices. Streaming services like Spotify and Deezer as well as social media platforms like YouTube emerged at a later stage, which consolidated both a trajectory of music consumption from an ownership to an access model as well as a process of online re-intermediation for the whole internet and, even more so, for digital music distribution. This platform-centred environment has allowed music right-holders to start licensing their works and earn remuneration from the technology companies that exploited their music. Despite this evolution, music right-holders’ communities claim not only that the value of their works has been disrupted by a platform-dominated economy but also that a “value gap” exists between the remuneration they earn from music streaming services and social media platforms. Footnote 9

Our interdisciplinary research agenda seeks to understand and illustrate, in an autonomous and evidence-based way, the consequences that the various business models deployed by the largest digital music platforms have had as far as music production, distribution, and consumption processes are concerned. These complex environments are deeply influencing the economic and social value of this art form, in ways which are often contradictory from a public policy perspective. On the one hand, platforms have effectively enabled new forms of music production and home-made creations that empower amateur, early career, or disenfranchised categories of authors (“professionalising amateurs”) to gain online exposure and eventually establish themselves as music professionals. Footnote 10 On the other hand, these algorithm-dominated businesses seem to have induced a significant impoverishment of creators, especially those of niche or marginal repertoires that are penalised by the logic of filter bubbles and recommender systems.

The above-mentioned scenario has led to significant reforms of legal and regulatory frameworks that aim to govern and shape European music ecosystems. The most significant among these adaptations are embodied in Directive 2019/790: Footnote 11

This directive seeks to protect the commercial value of copyright works – in particular recorded music – by making providers of online sharing content services directly liable for works their users make available. Footnote 12 This policy change represents a turn away from the legal principle of platform neutrality that EU lawmakers maintained for nearly two decades to stimulate the growth of a robust internet infrastructure. In reversing this principle, the legal provision aimed at obliging social media companies to obtain licences and to implement content identification technologies that can either restrict access to unauthorised works or help copyright holders to be remunerated for online exploitation of their works.

A second, potentially very impactful change is condensed into Chapter 3 of the directive, where the law codifies a principle of fair and proportionate remuneration for authors and performers, in particular with regard to online music exploitations, Footnote 13 and a right to receive – on a regular basis – timely, accurate, relevant, and comprehensive information on modes of exploitation of their works, direct and indirect revenues generated, as well as any remuneration due. Footnote 14

We believe that both these policy changes constitute a turning point or even a “big bang” in the European history of copyright and artists’ rights, whose real effects are yet to be evaluated in a non-doctrinal and evidence-based way. This has not happened yet because of the very slow transposition of these provisions into national laws and an approach to academic research on these reforms that we find incomplete, too abstract and ideological, and discipline-segregated (“silo-like”).

3 Advancing Complementary Disciplinary Expertise to Go Beyond the State of the Art

Our research presupposes the identification of disciplines that can eventually enable independent scholars to fully understand the consequences of market-driven and legislative changes in Europe’s music ecosystem, going beyond the state of the art in measuring and enhancing the impact of the main EU policymaking initiatives in this field. While the music industry has been analysed from an economic perspective, Footnote 15 we believe that these analyses should be strongly connected to political, legal, and technical investigations and a thorough empirical exploration of the societal impact of music platforms on European music creators and audiences. In the following subsections we seek to identify gaps in the literature and illustrate how research can produce new knowledge to the benefit of policymakers, stakeholders, and society at large.

3.1 Politics: The EU as a Policymaker in the Music Industry

Despite a series of thoughtful studies on EU cultural-media policies, Footnote 16 there has so far been no comprehensive attempt to examine and critically assess the ways in which EU policy and law have sought to cope with the notion and the goal of fairness in the music sector, the values underpinning the policy instruments introduced (market vs. non-market values), and the objectives pursued. We believe that the first pillar of an effective research agenda in this field should be a comprehensive policy analysis of different EU initiatives that relate to the music sector. We need such an exhaustive analysis to understand the origin, nature, breadth, and degree of policy changes towards the governance of online platforms in Europe and the implications for the music ecosystem. This endeavour shall consist in scrutinising several policy instruments, proposals, and reports, including key documents related to “Music Moves Europe”, that the EU has issued in the past three decades. Footnote 17

Our analysis will focus predominantly on three issues that have dominated debates on online platforms and EU music governance in the past few years: (i) the availability and prominence of local and national music content online; (ii) the rights for creators in relation to the use of their music works by online service providers; and (iii) a fair and proportionate remuneration of music creators. Our team will engage in a historical analysis covering a span of 30 years of EU policy initiatives in this sector to understand the nature and breadth of policy changes towards the governance of music streaming and social media platforms, including the latest tweaks that specifically regard fairness and transparency. This analysis will also help us address the way EU governance rules seek to promote fairness in an economy where platforms’ dominance was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe that an in-depth understanding of these changes is essential for policymakers as well as key digital industry players and music associations to assess the pros and cons of an increasingly pervasive dimension of EU law where copyright, contract law, and various forms of platform regulation are used to govern the extended landscape of business models and music professionals that characterises the platform economy. This unprecedented policy analysis can produce, in our view, new knowledge on the impact of online platforms and of phenomena such as the COVID-19 pandemic on music production and dissemination and thus contribute to finding solutions with a clear potential to bolster fairness.

3.2 Law: Copyright, Contract Law, and Platform Liability

Despite the adoption of the DSA and its broad attempt to introduce new obligations for VLOPs, the most important form of regulation aimed at helping music right-holders exercise their rights in the social media landscape is Art. 17 of the 2019 Copyright Directive. Footnote 18 This provision aims at setting a new standard of copyright liability applicable to social media platforms and at excluding the (previously uncertain) application of liability exemptions embodied in Directive 2000/31 (e-Commerce Directive). Footnote 19 Since it was included (as Art. 13) in the EU Commission’s directive proposal in September 2016, this provision has been the target of an endless number of academic articles, studies, parliament interrogations, open letters, popular petitions, and other initiatives that aimed at flagging the “negatives” of the complex legal mechanism it incorporates, especially for the protection of freedom of expression and “internet freedom”. Footnote 20 The volume and the strength of this critical movement increased, and became even more apparent, as soon as the EU Member States started transposing this provision in a rather inhomogeneous, scattered, and (mostly) untimely manner. Footnote 21 Such a broadly shared and vehement attack on this provision found its point of sublimation in the appeal brought by the Republic of Poland against Art. 17 before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which the Court eventually rejected. Footnote 22

Our research agenda, while duly considering the controversial aspects of this provision, as reflected in an exceptionally abundant literature, aims mostly at identifying its “positives”. We believe that only a fairness-centred reading and an evidence-based analysis of Art. 17 and its national implementations can tell whether this legislative reform strikes a suitable balance between antagonistic interests. A literature review shows that, from a constitutional perspective, many European legal scholars tend to place copyright and the rights of authors at a level that is lower than that of other fundamental rights. Several scholars write as if internet users’ freedom of expression and the tech companies’ freedom to run their online businesses should systematically prevail over the authors’ expectation to enforce their rights and to receive fair remuneration for the exploitations of their work. Footnote 23 Despite the relevance of these remarks, this conclusion cannot be justified on the grounds of the European human rights framework if we consider that even the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in several judgments, held that copyright, as a form of “property”, prevailed over other fundamental rights. Footnote 24 This conclusion is even clearer and stronger under EU law, considering the constitutionalisation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. As recently held by the ECJ on the grounds of the Charter, the complex provision of Art. 17 of the 2019 Copyright Directive can be viewed as a proportionate and legitimate attempt to ensure a fair balance between the protection of users’ and online intermediaries’ interests, on the one hand, and creators’ rights on the other. Footnote 25 In the social media industry, the ECJ’s reasoning in Poland v. Parliament and Council emphasised that, although not inviolable and absolute, the right to intellectual property embodied in Art. 17(2) of the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights is a human right whose high level of protection justifies the complex regulation embodied in Art. 17 of the 2019 Copyright Directive and supports its adoption and EU-wide enforcement. Footnote 26 This opinion is perfectly consistent with the continental European approach to copyright and authors’ rights as personality rights and human rights that give rise to moral and economic prerogatives. Footnote 27

Currently, the implementation of a principle of “fair balance” based on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights clearly shows that (i) the protection of authors’ rights can prevail over other fundamental rights, and (ii) the resolution of disputes in this field, especially in online environments, requires the ECJ to engage in a case-by-case assessment of the various interests at stake. Footnote 28 Our research seeks to provide more than just a doctrinal analysis of the effective impact of the 2019 Copyright Directive in the European music sector. In doing so, we intend to embrace an evidence-based and neutral approach to Art. 17, which only a minority of European scholars seem to have pursued, at least in the literature available in English. Footnote 29 To fill this gap, we will involve stakeholders and experts in empirical investigations to ascertain whether platform obligations, on the one hand, and copyright exceptions and the remedies embodied in Art. 17 to protect media and artistic freedoms, on the other hand, are being effectively implemented across EU Member States. Moreover, to assess more objectively the impact of content filtering measures, we will scrutinise music licensing practices, the use of content-recognition technologies, and other forms of content moderation before and after the entry into force of Art. 17’s national transpositions. This is relevant, in our view, also to understand whether these practices are well-established policies of social media services even in jurisdictions where a provision like Art. 17 and a brand-new legal infrastructure such as the DSA do not exist.

An equally relevant research gap in legal scholarship exists regarding the interplay of Art. 17 with other principles, rights, and obligations embodied in Chapter 3 of the 2019 Copyright Directive. Our research project assumes that, without empirical investigations, it is impossible to assess the effects of these joint measures on the businesses of legacy music producers and new generations of music creators. As things stand, the above-mentioned legal principles of fairness, proportionate remuneration, and transparency are likely to remain empty promises without the development of a new, data-driven approach to creators’ rights. This approach can only be based on the availability of large volumes of data enabling music creators, their representatives, and online exploiters to negotiate and conclude licensing agreements in a smooth, nuanced, machine-readable, transparent, and thus fair manner. Footnote 30 Our research proposal assumes that, in data-analytics businesses like digital platforms, even subscription-based services that choose and curate their repertoires (negotiating and paying royalties to creators) cannot ensure fair and proportionate remuneration without using reliable, standardised, and unequivocal copyright ownership and management information coming from the music sector. Footnote 31 The research we advocate in this field goes beyond the state of the art by providing a cross-country empirical analysis of the impact of recent copyright and contract law provisions embodied in the 2019 Copyright Directive and, at an earlier stage, Directive 2014/26 on the collective management of copyright on the music industry, broadly defined. Footnote 32 Our research includes an evaluation of how EU competition law and EU regulations (including the DSA, DMA, and upcoming legislation such as the EU Artificial Intelligence Act Footnote 33 and the EU Data Act Footnote 34 ) can apply and have an impact in the domain of online music platforms. This will allow us not only to produce evidence-based policy recommendations, but also to formulate a law-data-and-technology concept – built on the grounds of “co-creation” with stakeholders – to identify and rank solutions to the problem of information asymmetry across online platforms in Europe.

3.3 Economics and Business: Music Professionals and Value Networks

The music industry has been at the forefront of CCIs when it comes to the impact of technological advancements and related business model innovations. Currently, streaming platforms and social media are dominating the market, relying on their crucial position as intermediaries Footnote 35 and benefiting from winner-takes-all effects. Footnote 36 Their new business models, favouring access over ownership Footnote 37 and relying on the availability of vast amounts of (real-time) data, are accused of altering the value of content, particularly music. The music industry and its business models have constantly evolved with digitalisation and the growing domination of platforms. Footnote 38 Economists can contribute to interdisciplinary research by integrating the latest advancements in their analysis of value networks, of music professionals’ perspectives, and of innovative business models and by offering a longitudinal perspective on ecosystems, extensive surveys, and the use of quick-scan analysis to map large numbers of companies’ business models. Footnote 39 This will notably allow the integration of the role of “professionalising amateurs”, Footnote 40 a new category of content creators who act as YouTube, TikTok, or other social media’s partners, with growing economic and cultural relevance. After YouTube’s launch of its creator partnerships and programmatic advertising in 2006, these social media platforms started signing creators for the purpose of maximising value from their content and communities. More generally, the economic and business analysis of the music industry will consider the role played by data. A major disruption emerged from the availability of vast amounts of (real-time) data for music platforms. By translating data on user’s music consumption into relevant metrics, some authors argue, the business model of the industry was reshaped from music as a product to music as a service. Footnote 41 This is the case for services relying on advertising (content-sharing services like YouTube and Spotify’s free service) since data allow for the personalisation of advertising. This is, however, also the case with licensed services. For example, Spotify’s freemium model has been strongly supported by the platform’s focus on personalised content, which has been key in converting users to premium subscriptions. Footnote 42 Curated user-specific playlists are part of their product offering and perceived value. Footnote 43

The economic analysis we advocate addresses the notion of fairness notably in relation to value networks. While there is an increasing policy interest in ensuring that music streaming platforms are fair, there is a research gap regarding the industry’s and music professionals’ perspectives on fairness in the music platform market. Footnote 44 Since online platforms have become major enablers of music content flow, with unparalleled gatekeeping powers, Footnote 45 the remuneration of creators deeply depends on monetisation practices of platforms and on the ways through which algorithms expose information and cultural content. Footnote 46 However, to properly define this notion, there is an empirical gap regarding the industry’s and music professionals’ understandings of fairness in the music platform economy at both the European and national levels. Footnote 47 This task is even more complex if we consider that the impact of COVID-19 on culture and the performing arts has led to re-evaluations of the power of these platforms, paving the way for in-depth research into how industry representatives from the tech and music sectors conceptualise the fairness of music streaming platforms and social media. Footnote 48 The dramatic consequences of the recent pandemic for the performing arts encouraged several countries to start public inquiries into the power of global platforms, whose consequences are yet to be seen. Footnote 49

3.4 Computer Science: Influence of Algorithms on Music Consumption

Despite being presented as easing consumer choice, Footnote 50 platforms’ recommender algorithms are accused of lacking transparency, Footnote 51 threatening the exposure of content diversity and thereby challenging democracies Footnote 52 as well as violating consumers’ rights and citizens’ freedom of expression. Footnote 53 Algorithms have been accused of bias, Footnote 54 reinforcing discrimination in the real world, notably linked to race and gender, Footnote 55 and further increasing the popularity of superstars, blockbusters, and best-sellers at the expense of minority perspectives, local content, and emerging artists. Footnote 56 Our research project will highlight the effective influence of algorithms and aim to understand the way algorithms are being designed and implemented by different platforms. Footnote 57 Data are part of the algorithmic systems (especially recommender systems) that build this crucial personalisation process. Technological and economic developments have led to the availability of overwhelming quantities of digital content, notably music. Footnote 58 While some physical limitations have disappeared (for instance: space for storing, time for scheduling), others remain, notably users’ attention and what can be displayed to users (for instance: what a Spotify or YouTube user sees when connecting to the platform). Because of “overchoice”, Footnote 59 item selection can become cumbersome and complicated. Footnote 60 This makes it crucial, especially for media content providers, to incorporate algorithms that allow for a flexible and immediate response and adjustment to personal preferences of consumers. Such algorithms automatically filter, rank, and recommend content. Footnote 61 They influence the display or recommendation of content. Hence, algorithms are not neutral, and they raise questions as to how they are designed and implemented, who decides such matters, and on which basis. Beyond platform providers, all stakeholders in the music industry develop strategies and business models to cope with algorithms and adapt them to their own objectives.

Our research aims to produce new knowledge on the way platforms are affecting music diversity across the consortium members’ countries. In extending the work by Snickars and Mähler to detect and map patterns in algorithmic auditing by Spotify’s recommendation service, Footnote 62 we will account for a shortcoming of their work: access to data. Instead of using fictitious, stereotypical bots acting as users, we believe that this research would be more meaningful and fit for its purpose with the recruitment of a sufficiently broad and diverse number of real users (for instance: +1000). These users can donate their playlist data on the grounds of their right to access personal data collected and stored by streaming services and social media companies under Art. 20 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Footnote 63 Although the recruitment of users as personal data donors can be difficult, their involvement can be spurred by a data donation campaign across EU countries to fund symbolic or little monetary rewards, so that users have both a financial and an ethical motivation to participate.

User data are very useful for measuring the influence of algorithms on music consumption because patterns in personal playlists can be compared against one another and with curated playlists obtained from several radio broadcast channels in each of the countries where the investigation takes place. Moreover, in-depth qualitative interviews on music habits, perception of bias, diversity, and serendipity with 100 users can add a qualitative dimension to the interpretation of the playlist data. An important contribution here can be the development of fairness indicators for online platforms’ algorithmic systems based on the analysis of the data collected. To do this analysis, Fair MusE’s data scientists can rely on the use of Human-Num Footnote 64 and Dataiku, Footnote 65 a free software platform to analyse machine-learning algorithms, predictive models, and big data. Indeed, with the data and related statistics, this research can lead to an in-depth data analysis of the way platforms and their algorithms function and influence consumers. With that input, this new research can go further than previous research Footnote 66 by addressing the concept of fairness in a broader way through the development of indicators related to several dimensions.

4 Our Ethos

Disciplinary expertise is core to our work; its interdisciplinary deployment is what makes our research and its empirical investigations meaningful and promising. We believe that to address a multi-faceted concept such as fairness and to use it as an effective and desirable policy and legal instrument in the music sector, the approach shall necessarily be interdisciplinary. New criteria, methodologies, and tools are required.

4.1 The Concept of “Fairness” and Its Special Function in the CCIs

Recent developments in EU law and policymaking clearly show a strong and fast-growing policy interest in the notion of “fairness” in digital markets and ecosystems. Although this notion has various, conflicting facets, EU policy and legislative initiatives through which the European Commission is currently exploring the function of “fairness” clearly aim to promote awareness of how certain structural factors can radically reduce economic output and social welfare in several industries. Footnote 67 Especially in the CCIs, the principle of fairness is expected to reduce financial losses for content creators, whose work is significant not only in terms of economic growth but also in terms of the sustainability of Europe’s cultural and linguistic diversity. Footnote 68 From this angle, the music sector is exceptionally relevant and complex considering its vastness as a cultural and commercial phenomenon and the fact that music is created and enjoyed everywhere, including low-income areas and communities where more expensive and complex types of creative works cannot be produced.

Our research seeks to shed light on the economic, cultural, societal, and technical context of EU music ecosystems, where a great variety of composers, performers, record labels, and platform artists target very different audiences in terms of size and geographical scope without knowing how the main digital music gatekeepers treat, promote, and commercially exploit their works. In this regard, the notion of fairness stands not only as a prerequisite for the pursuit of goals such as sustainability and competitiveness of an entire industry but also as a guarantee of consistency and compliance with the EU’s constitutional obligation to preserve and promote the cultural diversity of artistic productions. An important assumption of our research agenda is that EU lawmakers believe that a genuinely diverse music ecosystem can thrive only on the grounds of contractual and economic fairness. This presupposes much greater transparency in collective rights management, data collection, and proportionate remuneration of individual authors and performers. Yet these values, which have been recently embodied in EU legislative measures, are far from materialising in either market realities or in the day-to-day activities of music creators and their commercial and cultural partners.

4.2 Interdisciplinary Effort to Elaborate New Criteria, Methodologies and Tools

Our investigation entails considering a broad variety of online and offline environments where music professionals are involved, and assessing contemporary uncertainties around music’s economic and societal value and how they challenge creators’ opportunities to thrive and make a living. We believe that, notwithstanding the exceptional challenges that platformisation poses to a more transparent, competitive, and sustainable music sector in Europe, the current state of digitalisation holds the potential to help a great variety of music creators gain recognition beyond local or national borders and to overcome physical limitations. To investigate the impact of platforms on CCIs, a truly interdisciplinary team and approach are needed to connect media production, dissemination, and use on the one hand, and the legal conditions that are expected to achieve public policy goals on the other. Where our research seeks to innovate the most concerns tackling “fairness” from a conceptual perspective, considering it as a complex concept that requires interdisciplinarity and the analysis of several stakeholders’ perspectives and points of view. In a digital media economy where the largest gatekeepers are data-analytics businesses, appealing content such as music (in both audio and audiovisual formats) is used to attract and keep users active on the gatekeepers’ platforms for as long as possible.

Our approach to the notion of fairness from policy, legal, economic, and technical perspectives considers the various challenges raised by the advent and domination of platforms such as YouTube, Spotify, and, more recently, TikTok. Our research project is designed to unveil how today’s music industry can significantly improve and evolve in terms of transparency and access to relevant data. So far, the digital music sector has been dominated by trade secrecy, which has made it very difficult for policymakers to intervene by developing appropriate policy measures. Footnote 69 Our assumption is that greater transparency in the music sector and broader societal participation can help fight some phenomena that systematically penalise the majority of performing artists, music composers, and content producers. These phenomena include the implementation of unfair algorithmic systems and a race to the bottom that leads to the degradation of the commercial value of professionally created music and unfair remuneration. Our research also assumes that there is an exceptionally complex problem of data asymmetry across different stakeholders in the value chains, insofar as online platforms treat data about artists’ and content producers’ compensation and modes of content supply, exploitation, and consumption as a trade secret, claiming they need to protect data from industrial competition. The restricted access to data raises major issues in terms of accountability and of establishing a level playing field in the music sector. Lack of transparency also prevents the development of policy measures to promote fairness and diversity in a post-COVID-19 context.

In Fair MusE, we aim to investigate whether and how platforms have effectively enabled new forms of music production and home-made creations that empower amateur, early career, or disenfranchised categories of authors (“professionalising amateurs”) to gain online exposure, build and curate new audiences, and eventually become well-established music professionals. Footnote 70 At the same time, this type of analysis will enable the consortium to assess whether content platforms have induced a significant impoverishment of creators of niche or marginal repertoires that seem to be penalised by the logic and functioning of algorithms. Footnote 71

4.3 Our Agenda’s Major Obstacles

In designing our research project and building on the experience of the consortium partners, we have tried to identify potential challenges, the biggest of which is certainly the secrecy of the data our research is expected to collect and draw upon. Our project deals with issues that are very sensitive – commercially and technically – for major economic and political stakeholders at the European and global levels. We are aware of the difficulties this might raise, especially when liaising with the tech companies that own very large platforms and music services. For this reason, our research plan relies on multiple data collection sources and seeks to take advantage of duties of data disclosure that, under certain conditions, EU law imposes on data controllers and processors.

Another difficulty for research dealing with exceptionally large corporate interests such as those that exist in the music sector and, even more so, in the tech industry is that of developing normative recommendations on the EU policy and legal frameworks towards creators, business strategies, or large media environments while facing the risk of capture and lack of neutrality, which could weigh upon each research or communication initiative. Research that takes copyright and creators’ rights as one of its main pillars is subject to a lot of – not necessarily justified – criticism. We know that scientists cannot avoid being drawn into the controversies they are investigating. Footnote 72 In any case, while acknowledging that it can be difficult, especially for social scientists, to ensure neutrality and objectivity when investigating issues that touch upon their values, groups, and cultures, Footnote 73 our objective is to take a balanced approach that relies on critical thinking without ever transforming it into activism.

Another set of challenges comes from the strongly interdisciplinary nature of our research. Public research funding agencies promote and identify interdisciplinarity, but organisational constraints can restrict their capacity to fully embrace novel ways of interdisciplinary collaboration and investigation. Footnote 74 More generally, researchers from different disciplines and different countries work in different contexts, share different objectives, and may simply differ in terms of vocabulary used. Regarding the context, Friedman argues that institutional structures and funding patterns (among other things) make interdisciplinary research difficult. Footnote 75 One could simply add that researchers working in the social sciences in labs or under remote working arrangements (by necessity or by choice) have a totally different experience from their fellows working in biological labs. Moreover, different objectives can be illustrated by the fact that while there are “few more familiar aphorisms in the academic community than ‘publish or perish’”, Footnote 76 the length, the type of outlet (e.g. journal vs. conference proceedings or monographs), the usual number of authors, etc. can vary greatly from one discipline to another. As regards different vocabularies, they are at the core of our work on the multi-faceted notion of fairness. More generally, this challenge relates to the fact that sector-specific differences in methodologies can quickly emerge during interdisciplinary research efforts. Footnote 77 Rogers et al. even suggest that interdisciplinary research can be difficult to achieve due to incommensurable positions adopted by different disciplines. Footnote 78 Cultural differences – as one may find in large European research projects – may add to the difficulty to understand each other. Arguably, some of the interdisciplinary collaborations envisaged in Fair MusE are more common than others (for instance: between law and economics), but our mix is more peculiar. Finally, one challenge could be that interdisciplinary research potentially detracts from researchers’ expertise. While learning from others, researchers may end up spending less time developing their disciplinary expertise. This is largely because interdisciplinary research involves negotiating conflicts. Footnote 79 Sanz-Menéndez therefore finds that interdisciplinary research can lead to both specialisation and fragmentation, depending on the research area. Footnote 80

5 Putting Our Research Agenda into Practice

From a methodological perspective, we believe that a two-phase structure can allow us to pursue our research agenda and put our idea of integrating different disciplinary elements into practice.

5.1 Phase 1

Phase 1 (M1–M24, where “M” stands for “Month”) is designed essentially as a two-year mapping exercise in which four research hubs (which include industry partners) will split into two groups: (i) Law and Political Science, on the one hand, and (ii) Economics and Computer/Data Science on the other. The former focuses on the role of EU regulation, assessing the impact of new or recent policy or lawmaking initiatives targeting online platforms in the existing law and policy scenario (as detailed in Section 5.1.1 ). The latter analyses the complexities of music platforms from the perspectives of music professionals and their business models (see Section 5.1.2 ) and of consumers, where our computer scientists analyse the influence of algorithms on music diversity (Section 5.1.3 ).

5.1.1 Assessing the Role of Regulation

A. Analysis of the normative and policy framework

Our project explores, among others, the domain of music policy and lawmaking through an in-depth critical analysis of EU instruments, reports, and proposals. Footnote 81 The consortium will pay special attention to the 2019 Copyright Directive and to the overarching framework for the EU Commission’s actions in support of the European music sector: “Music Moves Europe”. Footnote 82 Both instruments are exceptionally important pillars of the EU music sector policy, seeking to address key concerns of this industry and professionals in terms of financial aid, intellectual property rights regulation and subsidies. Considering that fairness has been a key driver for rethinking the sector-specific objectives of EU policy initiatives, Footnote 83 it is crucial for our project to explore the role of policymaking over the past few decades and to understand the evolution of this field and how (and when) “fairness” became a priority.

B. Music creators’ rights under EU law

This part of our work focuses mainly on the rights and other prerogatives originating from the implementation of Directive 2001/29 (the so-called “Information Society” Directive), Footnote 84 the 2014 Collective Rights Management (CRM) Directive, and the 2019 Copyright Directive. We will investigate the practical implications of authors’ and performers’ rights for transparency, fair remuneration, and contractual adjustments (and, possibly, revocation) of their copyright transfers, as laid down in Chapter 3 of the 2019 Copyright Directive. This will be done by analysing the standard “Terms of Service” of each of the aforementioned platforms because they play an essential function from a copyright point of view, granting social media companies a free, global, perpetual, and non-exclusive licence which covers the original work each user-creator uploads. This analytical exercise will have long-term utility, as the DSA imposes more stringent obligations on VLOPs. Footnote 85

C. Copyright liability of social media platforms

This section focuses on the scope and implications of Art. 17 of the 2019 Copyright Directive and of its national transpositions. Footnote 86 We will verify how social media companies seek to obtain licences for all works uploaded by their users and how they eventually restrict access to unauthorised works without infringing on users’ fundamental rights and freedoms. For this task, academics and experts from the consortium’s industry partners, authors’ collecting societies, and music right-holders’ representatives who are members of Fair MusE’s Advisory Board will cooperate closely. Footnote 87

D. Collective rights management in Europe

One of our research assumptions is that the global reach of social media and their multi-territorial distribution of music has been at odds with collective rights management, which has traditionally been fragmented from a territorial perspective, ultimately on the grounds of copyright’s territoriality. Footnote 88 Fair MusE aims to analyse the governance and licensing practices of EU collecting societies, especially for digital uses, as a result of the implementations of the CRM Directive. This analysis is essential to evaluate whether EU law has paved the way for an adequate music metadata infrastructure and the emergence of music data collection standards. Footnote 89 From a music licensing perspective, our main goal is that of ascertaining whether the EU has succeeded in reducing the very high transaction costs that, until the adoption of this directive in 2014, made fair remuneration of various music right-holders very difficult if not impossible. Footnote 90

E. EU competition law

We believe that traditional competition law remedies and the European Commission’s investigations in this field have a significant role to play in targeting potentially anticompetitive practices of dominant music platforms and social media. Footnote 91 This work includes a comparative analysis of the US and EU legal and music market scenarios. For several reasons, US federal antitrust law seems unfit (at least until recently) to remedy the extreme corporate power that the largest platform owners have acquired. Footnote 92 This situation sharply contrasts with that of the EU, where competition law has been widely used against tech companies’ abuses of their dominant position and where policymakers are trying to prevent these abuses through ex ante regulation.

F. Platform regulation and soft law instruments

Fair MusE’s team will consider the interplay between copyright-specific rules in the 2019 Copyright Directive and general obligations of digital platforms arising from regulations such as the DSA and the DMA. Considering that some of the largest online music platforms qualify, under the above-mentioned regulations, as “very large online platforms” and/or “gatekeepers”, we will map and evaluate how data access rights and protection mechanisms enshrined in these regulations impact on music right-holders’ effective participation and business on platforms. This work presupposes an analysis of automated decision-making procedures and music platforms’ content moderation policies, also to understand how many of these activities rely on standardisation, certification procedures, or human review. Our analysis includes soft law instruments, such as codes of conduct and best practices, which might prove essential to promote fairness towards music creators by enhancing data transparency and facilitating fair and proportionate remuneration.

5.1.2 Platforms, Business Models, and Professionals in the Music Industry

A. From value networks in the music industry to new music ecosystems

Our research project analyses evolutions in the music industry considering the implications of dematerialisation, of the dominance of platforms and their increasing reliance on algorithmic systems to filter and recommend content. To do so, based on a methodology applied in previous research, Footnote 93 we will map “value networks” and the inter-relations between actors. To this end, our researchers will identify: (i) the value chains and related activities; (ii) the different stages in the value chains that compose the value networks (including content creation, content production, distribution and placement, support environment, and support industries); (iii) the different actors (both generic names and actual examples of key players) in a process of stakeholder mapping. At the same time, our researchers will analyse relations between the different actors and possible schematic relations with other value networks, mapping inter-relations among, and multi-directional flows of value between, the actors and the process of value creation.

Our research will go beyond the deployment of a “value network” analysis by incorporating business perspectives that are targeted at platform-centred and platform-led networks and ecosystems. The added value of also applying “ecosystem” theories Footnote 94 consists in being able to address a wider range of factors (including regulation, music education, live performances, etc.) that determine how value is being created in the music industry.

The above-mentioned analysis will allow us to observe the impact of online music platforms beyond online streaming consumption. This impact is primarily in the online realm, between uses on different platforms (for instance: how the use of a track excerpt on TikTok can lead to an increase in this track’s exposure on streaming platforms), but also in the interactions between online and more traditional offline uses, such as the cross-effects between live performances and online consumption. Our analysis will finally address fairness from an economic perspective, especially in relation to the “value gap” debates, and more generally issues of creators’ remuneration, Footnote 95 in close connection with the project’s legal analysis (see Section 5.1.1 . supra ).

B. Conflictual and consensual aspects of fairness that digital industry and music professionals consider relevant for platforms

Our project will investigate what “fairness” actually is, not only for music professionals but also for the online platform providers themselves. At the European level, the focus will be on six key European associations: DIGITALEUROPE, DOT Europe, European live music association, European Music Council, European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, and IMPALA. Footnote 96 Data collection will draw on desk research (notably grey literature documents coming from the six associations) and will further be gathered by conducting semi-structured interviews.

At the Member State level, the goal is to explore (i) whether fairness is related to the remuneration of music composers and the rights for authors in relation to the use of their works by platforms, and (ii) whether fairness is perceived as connected with additional aspects, such as the role of online platforms in fostering cultural diversity, the creation of a level playing field for independent digital distribution platforms, etc. We will place special emphasis on the perception and use of algorithms (for instance: recommender systems) by authors and music professionals, seeking to explore how they understand algorithms’ influence and whether they adapt their works to fit the platforms’ expectations. Data collection will draw on an online panel survey involving participants from the digital industry and music associations in Fair MusE’s eight countries of investigation (Portugal, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, and Italy). Potential differences between Member States deriving from the size of the music market and their different systems of subsidies to the music sector will meaningfully enrich the analysis.

C. Online music platforms from a business model angle

Our analysis will finally map business models, combining research methods including desk research, expert interviews, and case studies. Our framework for mapping innovative business models will be based to a large extent on the Business Model Matrix Footnote 97 and the Business Model Canvas. Footnote 98 Based on the main types of actors identified previously, this work will produce a two-step business model analysis. First, based on a quick-scan analysis, Footnote 99 we will map all the main business model features of all the main types of stakeholders. It is expected that these main stakeholder categories are authors, distributors, and (playlist) curators. Second, we will conduct an in-depth analysis of at least six platforms with innovative models that are active in the EU. While online platforms have already been largely defined and researched, an in-depth analysis of online music platforms from a business model angle is still missing. We will conduct semi-structured interviews with selected organisations and companies to produce in-depth case studies.

5.1.3 Consumers, Platforms, and Music Diversity

A. In-depth assessment of the influence of algorithms on music consumption

Finally, Phase 1 of our research will include the consumer side of platforms, trying to analyse how these platforms and their algorithms impact consumers and, conversely, the strategies end-users may deploy to access, discover, and remain informed about music thanks to, or despite, platforms. This is also crucial for EU policymakers to effectively promote a fair and sustainable ecosystem. This work will help us make a synthesis of the various issues that have been encountered in research so far, especially as regards the practical effects of algorithms’ design (including recommender systems and playlists) on internet users.

B. Quantitative approach and data analysis

Our team will examine the effective influence of algorithms in the context of music recommender systems by using a quantitative approach and data analysis. We will rely on existing methods in the analysis of recommender systems, Footnote 100 extending Snickars and Mähler’s Footnote 101 analysis of algorithms beyond Spotify. Footnote 102 We will apply a broader and innovative approach to the collection of playlist data by replacing stereotypical fictitious users with +1000 real users who will donate their platform-derived data. Footnote 103 We will compare the +1000 anonymised playlists against each other and against playlists from 80 broadcast radio channels (i.e. ten from each of the eight EU countries within the consortium). This way we will be able to map playlist patterns; characterise diversity and bias in personalised playlists – which represents actual listening – with the curated playlists coming from broadcast radios. Qualitative in-depth interviews on music habits, perceptions of bias, Footnote 104 diversity, and serendipity with approximately 100 users (selected among those who donate their historical playlist data) will add a qualitative dimension to the interpretation of the playlist data. Interviews with broadcast editors responsible for playlists, curation, editorial profile, and rotation policies, and with representatives of online music platforms, will add an interpretative dimension to the analysis of broadcast music programming.

C. Fairness indicators

Finally, based on our previous work, our research team will produce fairness indicators in terms of platform transparency Footnote 105 and bias in recommender systems – as in Htun Footnote 106 and Mehrotra Footnote 107 – regarding algorithmic systems that are currently being used by the online platforms under scrutiny. By characterising the mechanics of the music recommender system algorithms as well the programming policies of many broadcast channels, our research team will highlight effective variables that indicate whether a given platform is fair and gives rise to a sustainable music business, while further suggesting a predictive model that can mitigate the adverse effects of these algorithms from a music diversity perspective.

5.2 Phase 2

In Phase 2 (M25–M36) we envisage the delivery of research outcomes to policymakers and stakeholders (Sections. 5.2.1 , 5.2.2 , and 5.2.3 ) alongside a comprehensive set of policy recommendations embedded in a White Paper on fairness in Europe’s music ecosystems (Section 5.2.4 ).

5.2.1 Music Copyright Infrastructure

In order to be fair, the increasingly platform-dominated music ecosystem needs to address the current lack of adequate data infrastructures through standardisation and sharing of content identifiers and music repertoire information, without which online music exploitations cannot be rewarded in a fair and proportionate way. To this end, we intend to develop a pilot named “Music Copyright Infrastructure”, the main goal of which is to help stakeholders target and solve the problem of information asymmetry across online platforms and right-holders – an asymmetry that is detrimental to all parties, including consumers interested in the diversity of music. We know that online music exploiters have turned data into their main asset (namely: massive, real-time data about their users, music consumption, and hence online music revenues). Considering prior efforts to solve these data asymmetries and their failures, due to participant concerns about the control of data and costs, we will provide a model agreement (and a set of guidelines) to help right-holders and licensees such as online platforms conclude music data-sharing agreements. In our view, these model agreements can help prioritise disclosure over enclosure (or secrecy) and can be directly tested by Fair MusE’s industry partners during the last year of project development.

5.2.2 Music Data Dashboard

The consortium will develop a demo of a Music Data Dashboard of statistical indicators for the European music sector to serve the information needs of policymakers, music professionals, and other stakeholders in this sector. This Dashboard will enable users to get a better understanding of evolutions related to the digitalisation and platformisation of the European music sectors by proposing or identifying indicators and data collection methods. Moreover, the Dashboard will incorporate a link to national statistical institutes, where appropriate. In short, we will (i) review current statistical sources of data on music at the EU and national levels, thus analysing statistical shortcomings in current sources, particularly regarding online music consumption and revenues; (ii) validate the data identified as well as the structure and the objectives of this tool during a “co-creation” policy workshop that involves policymakers; and, eventually; and (iii) deliver a demo for the Dashboard.

5.2.3 Fairness Score

The consortium partners will use the result of the business models analysis and of platform algorithms to set up a tool to assess music services and social media. A “Fairness Score” can become an effective tool to evaluate how online music platforms concretely deal with the criteria and goals EU policymakers intend to foster in the digital media environment. Each criterion, in its definition and assessment, will rely on the work performed in Phase 1 and will be reflected in the White Paper’s recommendations.

The Fairness Score will include the following indicative list of criteria: (i) governance in platform/social media; Footnote 108 (ii) market/non-market values; Footnote 109 (iii) local and national music in content online; Footnote 110 (iv) rights for creators, including access to data regarding their works and the exploitation thereof; Footnote 111 (v) fair and proportionate remuneration; Footnote 112 (vi) business model of the platform/social media; Footnote 113 (vii) gender equality; Footnote 114 (viii) small and medium-size producers vis-à-vis “superstars”; Footnote 115 and (ix) promotion of diversity in the algorithm. Footnote 116

Our Score will either be shaped as an industry-led solution or – on the grounds of data disclosure obligations that arise under EU law (cf. GDPR, DSA, DMA) Footnote 117 – as a soft-law policy instrument or a proper legislative instrument. We assume that this instrument could help EU policymakers influence platform/social media’s practices and conduct at various levels: legal (for instance, in terms of compliance with EU artists’ rights and copyright contract law); economic (for example, as regards fair and transparent remuneration); and social (promotion of cultural and gender diversity); and technical (algorithmic transparency).

5.2.4 Policy Recommendations: White Paper on Fairness in the Music Sector

Our policy recommendations will draw upon the above-mentioned research results, especially the in-depth analysis of new EU law measures aimed at promoting fairness and transparency towards music creators. On the grounds of an interdisciplinary analysis of the consequences of recent EU legislative measures, and of the related national transpositions, our Policy Recommendations will detail tools and actions to facilitate the exercise of creators’ rights through adequate data infrastructures. More precisely, we will include recommendations on the main objectives of Fair MusE: (i) whether and how today’s music industry can significantly improve and evolve in terms of transparency and fairness; (ii) whether and how, from both a legal and technological standpoint, the music sector can develop reliable, standardised, and unequivocal rights ownership information to be able to remunerate individual creators in a fair and proportionate way; and (iii) how legislative or industry-led solutions can reduce or minimise risks created by the enhanced dominance of the largest online music platforms.

6 Conclusion

In this manifesto , we advocate a new, interdisciplinary research approach that can remedy the shortcomings of a purely “silo-like” analysis of EU cultural and industrial policies in the music sector and of their effective impact in today’s platform- and algorithm-dominated economy. The music industry is an interesting case to apply this approach to, as it has gone through radical changes in the past two decades because of the extreme fragmentation of the rights, business interests, and artistic prerogatives that characterise the related creative communities. This has led to significant reforms of the legal and regulatory frameworks governing and shaping European music ecosystems, particularly those embodied in the 2019 Copyright Directive. This directive constitutes a “big bang” in the European history of copyright and artists’ rights, whose real effects are yet to be evaluated in a non-doctrinal and evidence-based way.

Approaching such changes, and in particular the multi-faceted concept of fairness, requires interdisciplinary expertise. This should include policy, legal, economic, and computer science perspectives. In Fair MusE, we analyse the EU as a policymaker in the music industry; we examine the legal framework regarding copyright, contract law, and platform liability; we study music professionals and how value networks have evolved; we assess how algorithms influence music consumption. We involve the music industry, notably via industry partners, members of our Advisory Board and other experts representing the tech and music industries, as well as the community of independent legal practitioners in several European countries. This does not go without challenges: overcoming data secrecy; dealing with opposing interests that govern strategic decisions in the music sector; and ensuring a harmonious collaboration between the diverse disciplines combined in Fair MusE. The last section describes briefly how we will do it, with a quick overview of the tasks and the main expected outcomes.

One point we are especially interested in is the EU’s policy responses. The 2019 Copyright Directive, with its provisions on the copyright liability of social media platforms (Art. 17), the fair and proportionate remuneration of authors and performers (Art. 18), and the codification of a right to transparency and access to data on the earnings generated by creative works (Art. 19), has an exceptional potential to strengthen the bargaining power of individual right-holders and their respective collecting societies in digital markets. The above-mentioned policy changes can become even more effective if we consider the entry into force of other instruments embodied in EU regulations, such as the DSA and the DMA, which are designed to significantly increase the level of responsiveness, internal risk assessment, and accountability of VLOPs and gatekeepers. This new array of EU law provisions targeted at the platform economy can certainly help address some of the existential questions raised by the largest online intermediaries’ ability to control consumers’ access to music repertoires and, at the same time, creators’ content distribution strategies and remuneration opportunities.

We argue that a proper evaluation of these recent developments in EU law should be supported by clear evidence. Such evidence can be built only through interdisciplinary efforts by independent researchers. We know that, to be effective and desirable as a policy instrument, the multi-faceted – and somehow open-ended – notion of “fairness” (used in key EU law provisions, and in many judgments of the ECJ in the copyright law sphere) needs to be dissected and analysed from a legal, policy, economic, and technological perspective, embracing a simultaneously balanced and multi-stakeholder viewpoint. That is the main reason why we promoted the creation of a consortium like Fair MusE, and why we intend to involve several categories of music professionals as well as representatives of industry and civil society in the co-creation of the project’s outcomes. Beyond the music-specific character of our interdisciplinary analysis, we are confident that our research results can also be very useful for other creative industries and media environments – including the news publishing sector – where data-driven exploitations and artificial intelligence have become pervasive and are inevitably changing the processes of content value creation and control and re-shaping ecosystems.

Change history

26 february 2024.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40319-024-01435-x

Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market For Digital Services and amending Directive 2000/31/EC [2022] OJ L277/1 (“DSA”). See Chapter 3, Section 5.

Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector and amending Directives (EU) 2019/1937 and (EU) 2020/1828 [2022] OJ L265/1 (“DMA”): see Art. 2 and Art. 3.

Promoting Fairness of the Music Ecosystem in a Platform-Dominated and Post-Pandemic Europe (“Fair MusE”), Grant agreement ID: 101095088, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101095088 , accessed on 2 November 2023.

The academic members of the consortium are: Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP); Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB); Aalborg Universitet (AAU); Université de Lille (ULILLE); Université de Liège (ULIEGE); Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP); Tartu Ülikool (UTARTU); Central European University Gmbh (CEU).

https://www.siae.it .

https://www.verifi.media .

The European Commission’s recent legislative initiatives in the areas of standard essential patents, artificial intelligence, platform-to-business trading practices, as well as competition law all rely on fairness as one of their objectives, namely: Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on standard essential patents and amending Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 [2023] COM(2023) 232 final; Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence and amending certain Union legislative acts [2021] COM/2021/206 final (“Draft Artificial Intelligence Act”); Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on promoting fairness and transparency for business users of online intermediation services [2019] OJ L186/57 (“Platform-to-Business Regulation”). Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 ( supra note 2).

Statistics evidenced a dramatic fall of the music business between 1999 and 2014, when global revenues from physical and digital music sales declined by 42%, from $25.2 to 14.6 billion. See IFPI, “Global Music Report 2018: Annual State of the Industry” https://www.ifpi.org/ifpi-global-music-report-2018/ , accessed 2 November 2023.

“Value gap” is an expression used for the first time by representatives of the music industry in Brussels to describe the impoverishment of their sector as a consequence of widely uncompensated uses of copyright works across online platforms and a sharp difference between the licensing fees paid by social media and the fees paid by music streaming services: see , for instance, Smith, Desbrosses and Moore ( 2016 ).

Cunningham and Craig ( 2019 ), pp. 11–14.

Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC [2019] OJ L130/92 (“2019 Copyright Directive”).

2019 Copyright Directive, Art. 17.

2019 Copyright Directive, Art. 18.

2019 Copyright Directive, Art. 19.

Wikström ( 2020 ), p. 367.

Laing ( 1999 ), p. 31; Sarikakis ( 2007 ); Littoz-Monnet ( 2007 ); Iosifidis ( 2011 ); Donders et al. ( 2014 ).

See European Commission, “Music Moves Europe”: https://culture.ec.europa.eu/cultural-and-creative-sectors/music/music-moves-europe , accessed 2 November 2023.

The complex infrastructure of the DSA is designed not to interfere, but rather to be complementary with the copyright-specific mechanism of Art. 17: see on this topic, Quintais and Schwemer ( 2022 ), p. 191; Rosati ( 2021 ).

Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market [2000] OJ L178/1 (“e-Commerce Directive”).

A non-exhaustive list of these initiatives includes the following ones: Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon et al (40 academics), Open Letter to the European Commission – On the Importance of Preserving the Consistency and Integrity of the EU Acquis Relating to Content Monitoring within the Information Society, available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2850483 , accessed on 2 November 2023; European Copyright Society, “General Opinion on the EU Copyright Reform Package”, 2017, available at https://europeancopyrightsocietydotorg.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/ecs-opinion-on-eu-copyright-reform-def.pdf , accessed on 2 November 2023; Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (2017), Position Statement on the Proposed Modernization of European Copyright Rules: Art. 13, available at: https://www.ip.mpg.de/fileadmin/ipmpg/content/stellungnahmen/MPI_Position_Statement_PART_G_incl_Annex-2017_03_01.pdf , accessed on 2 November 2023. See also Cory Doctorow, “Four million Europeans’ signatures opposing Article 13 have been delivered to the European Parliament” (EFF, 10 December 2018) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/four-million-europeans-signatures-opposing-article-13-have-been-delivered-european , accessed on 2 November 2023. Among the academic contributions following the adoption of the directive, see Dusollier ( 2020 ), p. 979, who describes Art. 17 as a “monster provision” considering its size and “hazardousness”. At an earlier stage, very critical scholars included Frosio ( 2017 ), p. 565; and Senftleben et al. ( 2018 ).

Rosati ( 2022 ), p. 397.

Although this initiative was consistent with Poland’s dissenting vote at the time the EU Council adopted Directive 2019/790, this case suddenly transformed the Polish government, a notorious antagonist (at least until very recently) of EU institutions vis-à-vis the affirmation of human rights and the rule of law, into a noble and tireless paladin of freedom of expression: see C-401/19 Poland v. Parliament and Council , ECLI:EU:C:2022:297. It is worth recalling that the Polish rule-of-law crisis culminated in infringement proceedings launched by the European Commission against Poland, alleging a failure to fulfil its obligations under Art. 19(1)(2) of the Treaty of the European Union (TEU) and Art. 47 of the Charter of the Fundamental Rights of the European Union. In the subsequent appeal, the ECJ ruled that Poland indeed infringed the principle of judicial independence under Art. 19(1)(2) TEU when lowering the retirement age of Supreme Court judges: see case C-619/18 European Commission v. Republic of Poland , ECLI:EU:C:2019:531.

A good example of scholars’ focus on the importance of safeguarding users’ freedom of expression and information in the online environment when implementing Art. 17 of the 2019 Copyright Directive is provided by Quintais et al. ( 2019 ), pp. 277–282. In a similar way, Geiger and Jütte claim that Art. 17 fails to properly address the need to strike a fair balance between competing interests, emphasising the negative effect of filtering mechanisms on users’ fundamental rights: see Geiger and Jütte ( 2021 ), pp. 532–534. Other contributions emphasise how Art. 17 can negatively impact on the platforms’ freedom to conduct business: see , for instance, Reda et al. ( 2020 ), at pp. 42–49, claiming that the provisions of Art. 17 are not capable of achieving a fair balance between the fundamental right to conduct a business and other rights, as they place a significant economic burden on online content-sharing service providers. See also Geiger and Jütte, mentioned above, p. 542, maintaining that Art. 17 imposes immense obligations on social media platforms, restricting their freedom to conduct a business.

Among the most recent judgments, see , for instance, ECtHR Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (The Pirate Bay) v. Sweden , 40397/12, where the Court stressed that intellectual property – more specifically the “rights of the copyright-holders” – is a form of “property” that benefits from the protection afforded by Art. 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the ECHR against unauthorised dissemination of protected works through file-sharing technologies. At an earlier stage, ECtHR Case Ashby Donald et autres v. France , 36769/08 founded the protection of the copyright of fashion houses in their own creations (against unauthorised photographers invoking their right to freedom of expression) again on the grounds of the constitutional protection of “property” under Art. 1 of Protocol No. 1 of the ECHR. For a detailed review of the ECtHR case law on intellectual property rights, see Geiger and Izyumenko ( 2018 ), p. 9.

In C-401/19 Poland v. Parliament and Council , the ECJ provides an analysis of the principle of proportionality under paras. 63–69 and explicitly states, in para. 82, that “in the context of the review of proportionality referred to in Article 52(1) of the Charter, it must be noted, first of all, that the limitation on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and information of users of online content-sharing services, referred to in paragraph 69 above, meets the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others within the meaning of Article 52(1) of the Charter, that is, in this case, the need to protect intellectual property guaranteed in Article 17(2) of the Charter.”

See C-401/19 Poland v. Parliament and Council , paras. 92–99.

See Strowel ( 2020 ), pp. 40–46, who emphasises how the constant, explicit reference to intellectual property as a fundamental right in the case law of the ECJ has played a central role in strengthening the protection and enforcement of copyright, especially in digital settings. As argued by this author, this explicit recognition under EU law provides an even stronger foundation for the qualification of authors’ rights as human rights. This is consistent with Art. 27(2) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the international level, which protects the moral and material interests of authors resulting from their scientific, literary, or artistic productions. It is worth recalling that while the concept of authors’ rights as moral rights is eminently European, it is gaining traction because of technological challenges even in systems – like the United States – that have historically neglected this concept: see , for instance, Sundara Rajan ( 2019 ), pp. 257–258.

As stressed by Strowel ( 2020 ), pp. 40–52, the recent case law of the ECJ reveals a careful approach in the examination of copyright disputes in the digital environment. The author stresses how, in several cases, the principle of fair balance made copyright claims prevail over defences based on freedom of expression and other fundamental rights (such as the right to privacy) because of the necessity to guarantee a high level of protection to intellectual property rights, as embodied in the EU legislation and as requested under Art. 17(2) of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. See , for instance: C-275/06 Promusicae v. Telefonica , ECLI:EU:C:2008:54; C-160/15 GS Media v. Sanoma et al. , ECLI:EU:C:2016:644; Case C-161/17 Land Nordrhein-Westfalen v. Dirk Renckoff , ECLI: EU:C:2018:634; C-476/17 Pelham GmbH and Others v. Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben , ECLI:EU:C: 2019:624.

For a more positive view on Art. 17’s impact on fundamental rights, see , for instance, Cabay ( 2020 ).

Mazziotti ( 2021 ).

The fact that prior attempts to improve rights information through standard tools such as the Global Repertoire Database (GRD) have largely failed can help solve a data-sharing dilemma that has only grown worse with the exponential increase in the availability of content on access-based platforms. On the failure of the GRD see , for instance, Milosic ( 2015 ).

Directive 2014/26/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online use in the internal market [2014] OJ L84/72 (“CRM Directive”).

Draft Artificial Intelligence Act ( supra note 7).

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data [2022] COM(2022) 68 final (“Draft Data Act”).

Rochet and Tirole ( 2002 ), p. 549; Poell et al. ( 2019 ), p. 1; Evans et al. ( 2005 ), p. 189.

Rochet and Tirole ( 2006 ), p. 645.

Luck ( 2016 ), p. 46.

Poell et al. ( 2019 ); Vlassis et al. ( 2020 ).

Van Audenhove et al. ( 2016 ).

Croll ( 2015 ).

Kastrenakes ( 2019 ).

Iqbal ( 2023 ).

Ferraro et al. ( 2021 ).

Vlassis et al. ( 2020 ).

Mazziotti ( 2020 ), p. 1027.

Flew and Gillett ( 2021 ), p. 231.

Castells et al. ( 2015 ).

Zarsky ( 2016 ), p. 118.

Bozdag and Van Den Hoven ( 2015 ), p. 249.

Helberger ( 2012 ), p. 65.

Bozdag ( 2013 ), p. 209.

Noble ( 2018 ).

Nechushtai and Lewis ( 2019 ), p. 298.

Chen et al. ( 2020 ).

Masnick and Ho ( 2014 ).

Gourville and Soman ( 2005 ), p. 382.

Kunaver and Požrl ( 2017 ), p. 154.

Haim et al. ( 2018 ), p. 330.

Snickars ( 2017 ), p. 184; Snickars and Mähler ( 2018 ).

Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC [2016] OJ L119/1 (“GDPR”).

Human-Num is a French infrastructure that aims at supporting research communities by providing services, assessments, and tools for digital research data. See https://www.huma-num.fr/ , accessed on 2 November 2023.

See https://github.com/dataiku , accessed on 2 November 2023.

Melchiorre et al. ( 2021 ) p. 1.

See various legislative initiatives of the European Commission, cited above ( supra note 7).

See the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), Art. 167, para. 4.

Johansson et al. ( 2018 ), p. 165.

Mazziotti ( 2021 ), pp. 214–215.

Scott et al. ( 1990 ), pp. 474–494.

D’Agostino ( 1995 ), pp. 396–405.

König and Gorman ( 2017 ).

Friedman ( 2013 ).

De Rond and Miller ( 2005 ), p. 321.

Lach ( 2014 ), pp. 88–93.

Rogers et al. ( 2005 ).

Villeneuve et al. ( 2020 ), p. 197.

Sanz-Menéndez et al. ( 2001 ), pp. 47–58.

Relevant instruments and reports include: Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (2000) OJ L178/1 (“e-Commerce Directive”); Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (2001) OJ L167/10; Regulatory framework for electronic communications and services (2003); Commission, “A Digital Agenda for Europe” (Communication) COM (2010) 245 final; Commission, “A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe” (Communication) COM (2015) 0192 final; Commission, “The AB Music Working Group Report” (2016) Publications Office of the European Union https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f5479d95-2fca-11e7-9412-01aa75ed71a1 , accessed on 2 November 2023; Commission, “New European Agenda for Culture” (Communication) COM (2018) 267 final; Commission, “Proposal for a Regulation establishing the New Creative Europe programme” COM (2018) 366 final; Council Conclusions on the Work Plan for Culture 2019-2022 [2018] OJ C460/12; Commission, “Music Moves Europe – First Dialogue Meeting-Report” (2019) https://culture.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/library/mme-conference-report-web.pdf , accessed on 2 November 2023; 2019 Copyright Directive; Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act) COM (2020) 842 final; Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act) and amending Directive 2000/31/EC COM (2020) 825 final; Commission, ‘Report from the Conference ‘Diversity and Competitiveness of the European Music Sector’ with EU Member States Experts” (2021) https://culture.ec.europa.eu/document/report-conference-diversity-and-competitiveness-european-music-sector-eu-member-states-experts , accessed on 2 November 2023.

Commission, “Music Moves Europe – First Dialogue Meeting-Report” (2019) https://culture.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/library/mme-conference-report-web.pdf , accessed on 2 November 2023.

See various legislative initiatives of the European Commission, cited above ( supra note7).

Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society [2001] OJ L167/10 (“Information Society Directive”).

Arts. 33–43 DSA.

On this front, our analysis will be comparative in nature. Namely, it will compare the copyright treatment of user-generated content platforms under EU and US law, in particular the case law based upon the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 1998, which amended the US Copyright Act (17 US Code), Section 512(c).

For the full list of the Advisory Board’s members, see the Fair Muse’s website at https://fairmuse.eu/team/ , accessed on 2 November 2023.

Cunningham and Craig ( 2019 ), p. 15, where the authors emphasise that social media entertainment has, from the beginning, a global dimension because its content is not primarily based on intellectual property’s territorial control (as it is, instead, in the film and TV broadcasting sectors); Mazziotti ( 2021 ).

CRM Directive ( supra note 32).

Ranaivoson et al. ( 2013 ), p. 665.

The project also aims to consider the recent actions of the French, German, and Italian competition authorities, which have been particularly active in enforcing competition rules against large online platforms. See , for instance, as regards the French Competition Authority: Decision 21-D-11 of June 07, 2021, against Google regarding practices implemented in the online advertising sector; Decision 22-D-12 of June 16, 2022, against Meta regarding practices implemented in the online advertising sector. As regards the German Competition Authority, see Decision B6-22/16 of 6 February 2019 against Facebook for data handling practices; Decision V-43/20 of 21 December 2022 against Google for data handling practices in the case of Google News Showcases. In Italy, see the proceedings launched in April 2023 by the Italian Competition Authority against Meta for abuse of economic dependence towards SIAE, available at https://www.agcm.it/dotcmsdoc/allegati-news/A559%20avvio%20e%20caut.pdf , accessed on 2 November 2023.

See , for instance, Wu ( 2018 ), p. 132.

De Voldere et al. ( 2017 ).

Kostovska et al. ( 2021 ), pp. 6–26.

Negus ( 2019 ), p. 367.

DIGITALEUROPE is an organisation that represents the digital technology sector in Europe. See https://www.digitaleurope.org/ , accessed on 2 November 2023.

DOT Europe is an association of the main internet companies active in Europe, including leading social media and streaming platforms. See https://doteurope.eu/ , accessed on 2 November 2023.

European live music association is a non-profit organisation that supports the European live music industries. See https://www.elmnet.org/ , accessed on 2 November 2023.

European Music Council is a non-profit organisation whose mission is to develop and promote music of all genres and types. See https://www.emc-imc.org/ , accessed on 2 November 2023.

European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA) focuses on protecting and advancing the rights of composers and songwriters. See https://composeralliance.org/ , accessed on 2 November 2023.

IMPALA is the European organisation for independent music companies and national associations. See https://www.impalamusic.org/ , accessed on 2 November 2023.

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Osterwalder and Pigneur ( 2010 ).

Loecherbach and Trilling ( 2020 ), p. 53.

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Based on the research conducted by the politics research hub of Fair MusE, as elaborated in Section 3.1 .

See the discussion in Section 3.1 above.

See an overview of the relevant issues in Section 4.2 above.

From both legal and economic perspectives, as elaborated in Sections 5.1.1 B, E, F and 5.1.2 A.

See Section 5.1.2 above.

As laid down in the Fair MusE’s Gender Action Plan.

See the discussion in Section 4.2 concerning the impact of algorithms on the discoverability of niche or marginal repertoires.

See Section 5.1.3 above.

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Using Music Streaming Services: Practices, Experiences and the Lifeworld of Musicking

Dissertation: This study is among the first to be explicitly concerned with music-streaming services from a qualitative user perspective. It sheds light on how music in general, and streaming technology in particular, is perceived, made sense of, experienced and practiced in the context of the individual streaming user’s everyday life. Its research perspective is inspired by sociological phenomenology, starting with Alfred Schutz’s action-oriented approach to understanding intersubjective meaningful experience. This perspective informs both the methodological model and the theoretical framework of the study, which is otherwise interdisciplinary and eclectic. The research was conducted in Norway, which currently boasts a globally pioneering streaming market. The study relies on a mixed-methods design using twelve heavy music-streaming users (ranging from seventeen to sixty years old) as informants. I began by devoting two months to sampling users’ self-reported practices and experiences with music-streaming services, combined with online observation and logging of all streamed tracks during this period. I followed up with individual in-depth interviews that were conducted while looking at the personal streaming-service interfaces together with the informants. This design is original to the dissertation and intended to make immediate experience sampling convenient for the informant. It is therefore also relevant for grasping everyday experiences of a taken-for-granted nature that arise in the context of mobile media and the ubiquitous Internet. I develop my arguments through a discussion that draws on theoretical frameworks that fundamentally revolve around notions of human action, which is also a focus of my analyses (via user practices and experiences). The principal study finding involves the extent of the role that music has assumed in daily life as a result of streaming services. Streaming-related musical meaning is found to be intensely self-referential and personal, and streaming presents itself as a malleable lifeworld resource. I also argue that music-streaming services afford involvements in diverse modes of experience and practice that are realised through the role and impact of these services in everyday life, as demonstrated by the micro-dynamics that follow upon the act of streaming among individuals, the technology, the music and the context. The dissertation’s overall structure is divided in two: (1) the covering paper that will survey the research project as a whole, and (2) four articles written over the three-year course of the project.

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Social Media + Society

Massimiliano Raffa

In an age where music streaming platforms have become the primary media for music listening, the experiences of musically competent users are often overlooked. Employing a mix of research methods (semi-structured interviews, reflective diaries, and analysis of on-platform-activity metadata provided by Spotify's APIs), this contribution aims to explore the viewpoints of musically competent users from Italy, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands regarding music streaming platforms. Through critical analysis, the study investigates both the subjective and objective aspects of their listening experience, as well as their interpretation of algorithmic mediation and platform affordances. The findings illustrate that competent users perceive the usage patterns afforded by streaming services to be insufficient in meeting their needs and the platforms to have been progressively diluting the quality of their listening experiences. Despite this, the study shows that streaming platforms lack alternatives to such an extent that even knowledgeable subjects prefer making do with this conditionthey consider appropriate to their current lifestyle-rather than striving to enhance their consumption experiences. Furthermore, hypotheses are posited, suggesting that adopting a "platform criticism" stance may be a distinction marker of competence status.

New Media & Society

First Monday

Raphaël Nowak

This paper investigates the missing link between music and material studies in analyses of everyday music reception. In light of the increasing material fragmentation and heterogeneity of contemporary modes of music consumption, I interrogate how to theorize the materiality of music technologies within everyday interactions with music. Thus, I review accounts on ‘music and everyday life’ before discussing contemporary modes of music consumption. Then I proceed to look at how recent technological changes have contributed in re-configuring questions of materiality in analyses of music reception. Ultimately, the article explores the relationship between individuals and the technologies they use to listen to music. The multiplicity of material options at individuals’ disposal accounts for both the presence and diffusion of music within everyday life.

Yngvar Kjus

Streaming services for music are growing worldwide, and the Nordic countries are leading the way. In Norway, streaming represented 88 percent of digital music revenues in 2014, as opposed to 23 percent globally. In essence, streaming services offer subscribers access to vast databases of music, and offer artists new means of exposure and sources of revenue. This article argues that the possibility of musical discovery is essential to these services’ distribution model. It examines the provisions for exploration through streaming, pointing to automated algorithms and human curation as key devices. It then collects quantitative data on the presentation of music via a Norwegian service (WiMP/Tidal) and qualitative findings from interviews with consumers about their experiences with music streaming. Key discrepancies arise between the promise and the reality of streamed-music discovery, both for artists seeking new fans (and funds) and for audiences expecting streaming to supersede existing forms of musical exploration.

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Understanding Spotify: Making Music Through Innovation

Understanding Spotify: Goodwater Thesis Highlights

Goodwater Thesis is designed to help founders better understand leading consumer tech companies and how they were built.

Spotify is a case study in transforming a challenged industry through a disruptive consumer-centric technology product.

Transforming the Music Industry

• The first wave of internet-based music services facilitated piracy and illegal digital distribution. Global music revenues declined by 40% from $23.8 billion in 1999 to $14.3 billion in 2014.
• Spotify’s streaming model was a key driver of the music industry’s inflection point. In 2016, global music revenues reached its highest annual growth rate in 20 years.
• Spotify’s revenue represents 30% of the global music market and 42% of the streaming music market – the largest and fastest growing portion of the market.

Streaming Adoption & Consumer Trends

Mainstream adoption of music streaming aligns with the rise of several consumer technology trends:

• Access over ownership. Most music streaming services offer on-demand access without downloading
• Data-driven personalization. Companies leverage data to better understand users and recommend personalized content, increasing engagement.
• Content unbundling. Music services unbundle albums into songs that can be repackaged into playlists

Introducing a Disruptive Consumer Music Product

• Founded in 2006 in Sweden, the company has 71 million paying subscribers and 159 million MAUs across 61 markets.
• Spotify has played a key role in transforming how consumers experience music by offering unprecedented convenience, accessibility, and data-driven personalization to drive discovery and engagement.

Dominating the Streaming Market

• Today, Spotify is the world’s largest music streaming service -- of 136.3 million music streaming subscribers globally, Spotify accounts for 40% of subscribers.
• Spotify competes primarily with large technology incumbents who seek to supplement their product suite (Apple, Google, Amazon), as well as music-focused venture-backed companies like Pandora, Tidal, and SoundCloud.

Rapid Revenue Growth

• The success in both user types allowed Spotify to grow its total revenue 39% and premium subscriber revenue 38% in 2017, resulting in a 45% 2-year CAGR for total revenue growth.
• Spotify primarily monetizes users through its premium subscribers, who account for 90% of revenue.
• The remaining 10% is generated from its ad-supported, free users.

• Harness social platforms to increase distribution and drive network effects.
• Disrupt existing models with new ones better aligned with consumer needs.
• Introduce new paradigms in large markets facing systemic challenges or uncertainty.

Winning Strategy 1 Harness social platforms to increase distribution and drive network effects.

• Spotify leveraged music’s inherently social nature to drive sharing and discovery amongst users.
• Unlike earlier music piracy services that destroyed value for music industry revenues with each share, Spotify created a viral loop that increased the value of the market and network with each new user.
• Spotify’s growth-oriented social features such as shared links, shared playlists, and aggressive integrations with social networks like Facebook in 2011 catalyzed rapid audience growth.

Winning Strategy 2 Disrupt existing models with new ones better aligned with consumer needs.

• Spotify introduced an all-you-can-eat utility service for a fixed monthly subscription that unlocked an audience of customers willing to pay for music with strong customer love - the highest NPS by far among streaming services.
• Expanded from utility to discovery, offering users data-driven personalization that drove both discovery and engagement.
• Spotify’s large captive audience further enabled its momentum in building out a two-sided marketplace, connecting and benefiting both creators and consumers.

Winning Strategy 3 Introduce new paradigms in large markets facing systemic challenges or uncertainty.

• With the industry’s declining performance, Spotify’s entry into the music market was timely.
• Publishers and labels were receptive to trying new revenue models to revive growth, while consumers were ready to adopt a new paid option to access an unlimited jukebox.
• Spotify’s product-centric, highly personalized, access-based model drives higher retention rates compared to other music services after four quarters.

• Grow users in existing and new markets.
• Enhance the platform to retain and convert users.
• Maintain or improve margins in the ad-supported business to unlock costless, rapid growth.
• Improve gross margins through audience scale.
• Develop a stronger moat through proprietary and diversified content.

The Next Level 1 Grow users in existing and new markets.

• Spotify is available in 61 countries and territories, but only 13% of payment-enabled smartphones in those markets have used the platform.
• To increase its penetration rate in existing markets, Spotify will continue enhancing the product’s freemium service, personalization, and content offerings.
• Spotify will also expand geographically into new markets, which requires optimizing for local music preferences and obtaining rights to local content and curators.

The Next Level 2 Enhance the platform to retain and convert users.

• The company reports a nominal monthly customer churn of 5%, but 40% of its churned premium subscribers rejoin the platform within 3 months, yielding an effective monthly churn of 3% – 4%.
• While individual songs are not exclusive and can be accessed from other music services, Spotify seeks to differentiate and keep users on its platform with its superior user experience, curated playlists, discovery mechanisms, and data-driven personalization.

The Next Level 3 Maintain or improve margins in the ad-supported business to unlock costless, rapid growth.

• Achieving positive gross margins on these free users is a key turning point for the business that transforms a marketing cost into a margin-producing revenue stream.
• Today, 10% of Spotify’s revenue is generated by ad-supported users. Spotify will continue to improve ad targeting, develop compelling ad experiences, and build relationships with brands to run high eCPM campaigns.
• Spotify increased ad-supported revenue by 41% from 2016 to 2017, primarily driven by programmatic channels that increased ad impressions 31% and represented 18% of ad revenue.

The Next Level 4 Improve gross margins through audience scale.

• While Spotify successfully scaled an audience and built out an impressive library of content, the company is still unprofitable and faces notable challenges toward profitability.
• Spotify’s biggest hurdle to profitability is at the gross margin level where it pays out more than 70% of its revenue in royalties.
• Spotify needs to leverage its sizeable and growing audience to negotiate increasingly favorable contracts with labels to improve gross margins.

The Next Level 5 Develop a stronger moat through proprietary and diversified content.

• 87% of Spotify’s streams are licensed from Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment (SME), Warner Music Group (WMG), and Merlin.
• To continue growing its business and expanding margins, Spotify will need to diversify away from licensed catalogs towards other content sources.
• Echoing the Netflix model of developing exclusive and proprietary content, initiatives like Spotify Studios enable Spotify to directly develop artist relationships, which could yield significantly better margins.

Executive Summary

Spotify is the world’s largest music streaming subscription service, and has played a key role in transforming how consumers experience music by offering unprecedented convenience, accessibility, and data-driven personalization to drive discovery and engagement. Founded in 2006 in Sweden, the company has 71 million paying subscribers and 159 million MAUs across 61 markets as of December 31, 2017 1 . From 2015 to 2017, the company increased revenue to over $5 billion (a 45% 2-year compounded annual growth rate) while expanding gross margins from 12% to 21% 2 . Spotify’s streaming access model reversed the industry’s declining revenue trend, unlocking revenue and adding value for consumers, artists, and all players in the music ecosystem. As Spotify enters a new phase of growth post-IPO, the company will be focused on leveraging data to further enhance its platform, growing its customer base via expansion into new markets, and achieving profitability.

The Market Opportunity

Winning Strategies

What can entrepreneurs and investors learn from Spotify’s path to IPO?

• Build scale through an organic & controlled go-to-market strategy. Spotify’s go-to-market strategy enabled it to organically build a large audience through controlled scaling by geographic region. By rolling out in Europe (2008) and the United States (2011) with an invite-only system, the company generated buzz and increased demand through perceived scarcity. This strategy also equipped Spotify with a lever to control growth given its variable cost structure, incurring royalty costs for each new user who listens to songs. Spotify also launched a freemium service, attracting a large initial audience and expanding the market by offering a solution that bridged customers from legacy music options like iTunes and piracy software into a streaming music experience.
• Harness social platforms to increase distribution and drive network effects. Spotify leveraged music’s inherently social nature to drive sharing and discovery amongst users. Unlike earlier music piracy services that destroyed value for music industry revenues with each share, Spotify created a viral loop that increased the value of the market and network with each new user. Spotify’s growth-oriented social features such as shared links, shared playlists, and aggressive integrations with social networks like Facebook in 2011 catalyzed rapid audience growth. The company subsequently launched innovative integrations with platforms like PlayStation (2014) and Uber (2016).

• Disrupt existing models with new ones better aligned with consumer needs. By introducing an all-you-can-eat utility service for a fixed monthly subscription, Spotify offered a clear consumer value proposition that unlocked an audience of customers willing to pay for music and increased revenue across the music ecosystem. As the company accumulated data from its growing user base on music tastes and preferences, Spotify expanded from utility to discovery, offering users data-driven personalization that drove both discovery and engagement. In Q4 2017, the average Spotify MAU consumed 25 hours of content per month, and 44% of MAUs accessed Spotify daily 7 . Spotify’s large captive audience further enabled its momentum in building out a two-sided marketplace, connecting and benefiting both creators and consumers. Spotify provides a platform for creators to monetize their work, connect with their fans, and access analytics to better understand and grow their business. Playlists are critical to the marketplace, enabling discovery for both consumers and artists: listening time for personalized and curated playlists increased from less than 20% two years ago to 31% in 2017 8 .
• Introduce new paradigms in large markets facing systemic challenges or uncertainty. The first wave of internet-based music services facilitated piracy and illegal digital distribution, significantly impacting global music revenues which declined by 40% from $23.8 billion in 1999 to $14.3 billion in 2014. Piracy also delivered a poor customer experience as polluted BitTorrent networks left consumers unable to consistently access high quality music. With the industry’s declining performance, Spotify’s entry into the music market was timely – publishers and labels were receptive to trying new revenue models to revive growth, while consumers were ready to adopt a new paid option to access an unlimited jukebox. Furthermore, music labels have fixed production costs and little-to-no variable costs for incremental distribution, incentivizing them to forgo exclusive contracts and widely distribute their songs on every platform.

The Next Level

• Grow users in existing and new markets. Spotify is available in 61 countries and territories, but only 13% of payment-enabled smartphones in those markets have used the platform 9 . Europe is Spotify’s largest region, accounting for 37% of total users, followed by North America at 32%. The fastest growing regions are Latin America which grew 37% in 2017 to 21% of total Spotify users, and rest of world which increased 51% to 10% of MAUs 10 . To increase its penetration rate in existing markets, Spotify will continue enhancing the product’s freemium service, personalization, and content offerings. Spotify will also expand geographically into new markets, which requires optimizing for local music preferences and obtaining rights to local content and curators.
• Enhance the platform to retain and convert users. With increasing competition in the streaming music market, Spotify will enhance its product offering to not only drive continued engagement and conversion from existing users, but also to attract new users. The company reports a nominal monthly customer churn of 5% 11 , but 40% of its churned premium subscribers rejoin the platform within 3 months, yielding an effective monthly churn of 3% – 4%. Spotify will continue to make strategic acquisitions, invest in research and development that leverages data to deepen personalization, and expand on its platform-agnostic strategy to increase its presence and network effects among users. While individual songs are not exclusive and can be accessed from other music services, Spotify seeks to differentiate and keep users on its platform with its superior user experience, curated playlists, discovery mechanisms, and data-driven personalization.

• Improve gross margins through audience scale. While Spotify successfully scaled an audience and built out an impressive library of content, the company is still unprofitable and faces notable challenges toward profitability. Spotify’s biggest hurdle to profitability is at the gross margin level where it pays out more than 70% of its revenue in royalties 12 . In parallel with investing in direct artist relationships, Spotify needs to leverage its sizeable and growing audience to negotiate increasingly favorable contracts with labels to improve gross margins.

• Maintain or improve margins in the ad-supported business to unlock costless, rapid growth. Spotify materially improved the gross margins on its ad-supported users to 10% in 2017 from negative margins in previous years. Achieving positive gross margins on these free users is a key turning point for the business that transforms a marketing cost into a margin-producing revenue stream. Spotify can now accelerate growth cost-effectively by attracting free users into the ad-supported product while still generating positive margins on those users. The company increased the ad-supported segment’s gross margins by creating more value for advertisers and better monetizing ad-supported users. Spotify increased ad-supported revenue by 41% from 2016 to 2017, primarily driven by enhanced programmatic channels that increased ad impressions 31% and represented 18% of ad revenue 13 . In September 2017, Spotify launched its self-serve advertising platform – Spotify Ad Studio – to improve efficiency and scalability of its advertising platform. Today, 10% of Spotify’s revenue is generated by ad-supported users. Spotify’s ad-supported ARPU was $0.51 in 2017 compared to Pandora’s ad-supported ARPU of $1.18 14 , suggesting ample room for growth in ad-supported revenue. Spotify will continue to improve its ad targeting to deliver more relevant ad content, develop compelling audio, video, and display ad unit experiences (e.g. skippable audio ads, sponsored playlists), build relationships with brands to run high eCPM campaigns, and improve advertiser analytics to improve campaign performance.

• Develop a stronger moat through proprietary and diversified content. Today, 87% of Spotify’s streams are licensed from Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment (SME), Warner Music Group (WMG), and Merlin 15 . To continue growing its business and expanding margins, Spotify will need to diversify away from licensed catalogs towards other content sources which are either proprietary to Spotify or net new in the market. Echoing the Netflix model of developing exclusive and proprietary content, initiatives like Spotify Studios enable Spotify to directly develop artist relationships and content, which could yield significantly better monetization and margins as demonstrated by the difference between Netflix’s $3.24 gross profit per subscriber 16 , and Spotify’s $1.40 gross profit per subscriber. Spotify is also expanding beyond music content by offering podcasts, artist merchandise, concert tickets, and short form videos that feature substantially higher margins or do not require fees. Diversified and exclusive content increases Spotify’s ability to raise premium subscription pricing in the future.

• Continue to win over the modern family. Changing demographics and consumer behaviors have redefined the term “family” from its original connotation of the “nuclear family”. Technology and media companies must increasingly service the needs of this modern family of roommates, friends, family and peers who may not be in the same physical location. While video streaming services have experienced unauthorized sharing (30% of Americans use someone’s shared password 17 , Spotify addresses this need with its family plan, providing access for up to 6 accounts for $14.99 per month. Spotify makes adding friends and family to this plan seamless, only requiring users to register their account with the same home address. By comparison, Apple Music’s Family Sharing plan is limited to iOS users and has a much higher hurdle to adoption, requiring users to be part of an additional Family Sharing account. Spotify’s family plan improves retention by adding economic and social friction to switching platforms.

Business Overview

Spotify is a mobile-first, online music streaming platform with paid subscribers and ad-supported users. Paid subscribers can play and download songs on demand from their phone, desktop or other devices while free users can play songs on-demand only on their desktop and can listen to radio-like playlists on their phones with intermittent ads.

History . Today, Spotify is one of the largest drivers of global music revenue, with 159M MAUs generating $5.1 billion in revenue in 2017. The journey began 12 years ago when Daniel Ek and Marten Lorentzen founded Spotify in Stockholm, Sweden. Key milestones include:

• 2007. Launched first public beta in Spring. Viral growth followed in Winter with the introduction of shared playlists.
• 2008. Launched in Europe in October. As it grew in distribution, Spotify decided to monetize its free users through ads; they controlled free user growth through an invite-only mechanism. Raised a $22 million Series A round.
• 2009. Raised a $50 million Series B in Summer 2009 to license the labels’ music by prepaying, which helped to secure deals with labels that were not initially familiar with the new music streaming business model. Launched mobile platform in Fall 2009, taking advantage of the rising tide of iOS and Android devices.
• 2011. Announced 1 million paid subscribers in Spring. Expanded internationally into US. Raised a $100 million Series D.
• 2012 and beyond. Went on to raise $2 billion in total equity financing while making Spotify more accessible to users through partnerships with Facebook, Uber, and PlayStation, and introducing pricing options such as student and family plans.

Providing value to both sides of the marketplace. While providing a best-in-class experience for music listeners, Spotify also empowered its suppliers by helping artists and labels better monetize, distribute, and analyze their songs. In a challenged industry, Spotify helped drive growth by making artists’ songs easily discoverable by its millions of users across 61 countries, and provided artists with $8B+ in royalties. Spotify’s robust data is also additive to artists, enabling them to be more easily discovered by future fans through its personalized and curated playlists, as well as to engage their audience more meaningfully through data analytics tools.

Market Landscape

Rise of digital streaming. From 1999 to 2014, the music industry lost nearly 40% of its revenue. Spotify’s launch in 2008 introduced streaming, which catalyzed a second wave of music services that restored growth to the global music industry. Global music revenues in 2016 reached its highest annual growth rate in 20 years, increasing 6% from 2015 to reach $15.7 billion. Spotify’s revenue accounted for 30% of the global music market in 2017, representing 42% of the streaming music market. Paid streaming subscriptions continue on an upward trajectory across the music industry; streaming revenues grew from 9% of global music revenue in 2011 to 72% in 2017 21 .

Streaming competitor landscape. Spotify competes for consumer time and attention across different forms of media and content, such as radio, video, social media, and other on-demand music streaming services. Of 136.3 million music streaming subscribers globally, Spotify accounted for 40% of subscribers 25 . On-demand streaming competitors are dominated by large technology companies like Apple (19%), Amazon (12%), and Google, as well as well-capitalized music-focused companies like Pandora, Tidal, and SoundCloud.

• Access over ownership. Most music streaming services offer on-demand access to media where users can stream a song without having to download it. The trend of favoring access over ownership extends to both digital (Netflix and video) and physical (Uber and cars) behaviors.
• Data-driven personalization. Music services facilitate discovery in a giant sea of content.  Companies are collecting and leveraging data to better understand users and recommend personalized content to deliver a better experience and increased engagement. Stitch Fix, for example, leverages data combined with human judgment to provide personalized retail at scale.
• Content unbundling. In the past, music was “bundled” and sold in albums. Music services today unbundle albums into individual songs that can be repackaged and personalized. Cable television similarly experienced disruption when consumer technology services offered unbundled content.

Large Tech Incumbents. Large technology incumbents seek to supplement their product suite by offering music services. Apple, Google, and Amazon have a significant advantage in owning platforms with large distribution, and benefit from existing scale, brand recognition, and budget as leverage to negotiate licenses and build out their music libraries.

• Apple Music is Spotify’s closest direct competitor with 38 million paying subscribers compared to Spotify’s 71 million 27 . Apple has previously experimented with exclusives and differentiation based on human touch, like its Beats 1 radio and playlists which are curated by tastemakers 28 .
• YouTube & Google Play Music. Alphabet’s biggest differentiator is its YouTube catalogue with an unparalleled collection of music videos, original content, remixes, and covers that be accessed on-demand, as well as offline via YouTube Red. Music is one of the most popular genres of video on YouTube with more than 1 billion users per month 29 .
• Amazon Music offers a limited catalogue of ad-free, on-demand music as part of Amazon Prime, and can be upgraded for a fee to Amazon Music Unlimited which includes an expanded library and offline listening. Amazon Prime music is usage is most concentrated in US, Japan, Germany and UK, where 35% of Prime subscribers are Prime Music users 30 .

Pure Streaming Players. These well-capitalized companies focus on music as a core part of their business, each with a different consumer value proposition.

• Pandora is a personalized radio service with hundreds of curated stations by genre. To compete with the rising popularity of on-demand streaming, Pandora offers ad-free premium services that offer offline play, higher quality, and on-demand options.
• Tidal was founded in 2014 by Jay-Z and is widely known for its audio quality and artist-friendly business model.
• SoundCloud is known for its user-generated content, which is augmented by its creator-friendly tools for uploading and sharing files. It is popular among niche audiences for content like indie music, electronic dance music, podcasts, etc.

Consumer Trends & Research

Goodwater conducts proprietary consumer research via survey panels and sentiment word clouds to identify consumer insights and trends.

Survey Panel. Every quarter, Goodwater runs a 3,000-person consumer survey across a panel of consumers representing all ages, demographics and geographies of the US. We systematically track the usage of hundreds of products, market share changes between competing products, and expected increased or decreased usage. The insights below are based on the following music streaming services: Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Amazon Music, and SoundCloud.

Music service usage distribution. In Q4 2017, 65% of respondents used at least one music streaming service. Over the last year, Pandora consistently had the highest usage rate at 34-35%, followed by Spotify at 21-25%. Music services by large technology incumbents Amazon, Apple, and Google Play had less usage across respondents, ranging from 13 to 17%.

Financial Overview

Marching towards profitability. Overall as the Company has continued to scale, its EBITDA margin has steadily improved to -8% in 2017 from -12% in 2013. These improvements primarily flow through from the gross margin level. Spotify has successfully maintained its marketing cost as a percentage of revenue around its current level in 2017 of 14% even as the Company has accelerated user growth and gained significant scale. Spotify’s marketing efficiency is largely attributed to continued word-of-mouth growth lowering Spotify’s dependence on paid marketing as well as funneling marketing costs through their freemium go-to-market strategy. As a result, Spotify achieved positive contribution margins after marketing costs beginning in 2013.

The Company’s R&D expense as a percentage of revenue has also stayed consistent at 10% in 2017. To reinforce the importance of tech enablement in the business, Spotify’s management believes the R&D expense percentage will rise in the future as the Company continues to innovate on the customer experience.

Comparables Analysis

There are a number of risk factors to Spotify’s long-term prospects, including:

• Spotify is dependent on third-party licenses for music streaming content. Failing to negotiate favorable terms or obtain these licenses will materially impact the business and customer experience.
• Recent changes to copyright laws will increase the streaming royalty rates due to songwriters and music publishers, and could negatively impact gross margins.
• Spotify relies on successful partnerships with third-party platforms, operating systems, and hardware to reach customers.
• Spotify has incurred significant operating losses and may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to be profitable.
• The Company has also identified historical weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting, which could adversely affect the accuracy and punctuality of financial results.
• Assertions by third parties of intellectual property infringements or violations by Spotify can harm its business. Since July 2017, six lawsuits alleging unlawful reproduction and distribution haves been filed against Spotify.
• Continued competition from larger platforms (Apple with iPhone, Google with Android, Amazon with Alexa) that can easily integrate and bundle music services could slow adoption.
• The emergence of new interfaces (e.g., car, voice) where consumers will want to access music may provide entry points for new competitors.

The Rise of Streaming Music and Implications for Music Production

• December 2017
• Review of Network Economics 16(4):351-385
• 16(4):351-385

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Streaming Reaches Flood Stage: Does Spotify Stimulate or Depress Music Sales?

Streaming music services have exploded in popularity in the past few years, variously raising optimism and concern about their impacts on recorded music revenue. On the one hand, streaming services allow sellers to engage in bundling with the promise of increasing revenues, profits, and consumer surplus. Successful bundling would indeed translate some of the interest in music not generating revenue through individual track sales - unpaid consumption and deadweight loss - into willingness to pay for the bundled offering. On the other hand, streaming may displace traditional individual track sales. Even if they displace sales, streams may however still raise overall revenue if the streaming payment is large enough in relation to the extent of sales displacement. We make use of the growth in Spotify use during the years 2013-2015 to measure its impact on unpaid consumption and on the sales of recorded music. We find that Spotify use displaces permanent downloads. In particular, 137 Spotify streams appear to reduce track sales by 1 unit. Consistent with the existing literature, our analysis also shows that Spotify displaces music piracy. Given the current industry’s revenue from track sales ($0.82 per sale) and the average payment received per stream ($0.007 per stream), our sales displacement estimates show that the losses from displaced sales are roughly outweighed by the gains in streaming revenue. In other words, our analysis shows that interactive streaming appears to be revenue-neutral for the recorded music industry.

Thanks to seminar participants at IPTS, the SEEK Digital Economy Workshop at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, and Zurich/ETH. Joel Waldfogel has served as a consultant to Pandora. The views expressed in the paper are those of the authors' and should not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission, the EC Joint Research Center, the IPTS, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Joel Waldfogel has served as a consultant to Pandora.

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Luis Aguiar & Joel Waldfogel, 2017. " As streaming reaches flood stage, does it stimulate or depress music sales?, " International Journal of Industrial Organization, .

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Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Examining the role of music streaming motives, social identification, and technological engagement in digital music streaming service use.

Heidi Bolduc , University of Central Florida

According to the Nielsen Music 360 Research Report, 67% of all music consumers in the United States used digital music streaming services to listen, discover, and share music online in 2014 (The Nielsen Company, 2014). As such, communications scholars and music industry professionals are beginning to recognize the importance of understanding the factors that influence digital music listener behavior. Therefore, this study proposes an expanded theory of planned behavior model (TPB) by incorporating music streaming motives, social identification, and technological engagement into the original TPB model framework in an effort to gain a better understanding of people's intentions to use digital music streaming services as well as the amount of time spent listening to them. Results suggest that both the original TPB and expanded TPB models can be successfully applied within the context of digital music streaming service use. Specifically, attitudes as well as convenience emerged as positive contributors to intention to use digital music streaming services, while entertainment along with social identification, technological engagement, and behavioral intention emerged as positive contributors to streaming behavior. Additionally, information seeking and pass time emerged as negative contributors to these two behavioral outcomes. However, adding these additional components only improved the overall ability of the expanded model to predict streaming behavior. Both models also explained a larger percentage of intention to use digital music streaming services as compared to total time spent listening. As a result, this study implies the practical importance of understanding the fundamental differences between what drives listener intentions to use digital music streaming services as compared to what drives the actual amount of time listeners spend using digital music streaming services.

If this is your thesis or dissertation, and want to learn how to access it or for more information about readership statistics, contact us at [email protected]

Graduation Date

Kinnally, William

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College of Sciences

Communication

Degree Program

Communication; Mass Communication

application/pdf

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0006266

Release Date

August 2019

Length of Campus-only Access

Access status.

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

STARS Citation

Bolduc, Heidi, "Examining the Role of Music Streaming Motives, Social Identification, and Technological Engagement in Digital Music Streaming Service Use" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations . 5208. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/5208

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216 Awesome Music Topics That Will Inspire Your Thesis

On this page, you will find the ultimate list of 216 brand new, 100% original music topics for high school, college and university students. No, it’s not a trick! You can use any of our topics about music for free and you don’t even have to give us credit. Many of these research topics on music should work great in 2023.

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Writing A Research Paper About Music

So, what is music? Music is a form of art that uses sound and rhythm to create an emotional or aesthetic experience. It can be created by combining different elements such as melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre. Music is a universal language that can be found in all cultures and has been an important part of human history for thousands of years. It can evoke emotions, tell stories, and communicate ideas. Music can take many forms, including vocal or instrumental, solo or ensemble, live or recorded, and can be classified into various genres such as rock, pop, classical, jazz, and many more.

But how do you write a research paper about music quickly? Well, we have a great step by step guide for you right here.

Choose a music topic. Select a topic that interests you and that you have enough background knowledge on to research and write about. Conduct research. Use a variety of sources to gather information on your topic, including books, academic journals, online databases, and primary sources such as interviews or musical recordings. Organize your research. Once you have gathered enough information, organize your research into an outline or a mind map to help you visualize how your paper will flow. Write a thesis statement. Your thesis statement should be a concise statement that summarizes the main argument of your paper. Write a rough draft. Begin writing your paper using the information you have gathered and the outline or mind map you created. Focus on creating a clear and coherent argument, and be sure to cite all sources using the appropriate citation style. Help with coursework services can aid you in succeeding with this part. Revise and edit. Once you have completed a rough draft, revise and edit your paper to improve its clarity, organization, and coherence. Check for grammar and spelling errors, and make sure all citations are correct and properly formatted. Create a bibliography or works cited page. Include a list of all sources you used in your research, including books, articles, interviews, and recordings. Finalize your paper. After making all necessary revisions and edits, finalize your paper and ensure that it meets all the requirements set by your instructor or professor. Proofread everything and make sure it’s perfectly written. You don’t want to lose points over some typos, do you?

Easy Research Topics About Music

• The history and evolution of hip-hop culture
• The impact of classical music on modern composers
• The role of music in therapy for mental health
• The cultural significance of jazz in African-American communities
• The influence of traditional folk music on contemporary artists
• The development of electronic music over the past decade
• The use of music in film to enhance storytelling
• The rise of K-pop and its global popularity
• The effects of music on our learning abilities
• The use of music in branding in the fashion industry
• The influence of the Beatles on popular music
• The intersection of music and politics in the 1960s
• The cultural significance of reggae music in Jamaica
• The history and evolution of country music in America
• The impact of music streaming on the music industry

Opinion Essay Music Topics

• Music piracy: Should it be considered a serious crime?
• Should music education be mandatory in schools?
• Is autotune ruining the quality of music?
• Are music awards shows still relevant in today’s industry?
• Should music lyrics be censored for explicit content?
• Is it fair that some musicians earn more money than others?
• Is classical music still relevant in modern society?
• Should music festivals have age restrictions for attendees?
• Is it fair for musicians to be judged on their personal lives?
• Is the current state of the music industry sustainable?
• Should musicians be held accountable for the messages in their lyrics?
• Is the role of the record label still important in the age of digital music?
• Should musicians be able to express their political views in their music?
• Does the use of music in movies and TV shows enhance or detract from the storytelling?

Interesting Music Research Topics

• The impact of music on athletic performance
• The use of music in advertising and consumer behavior
• The role of music in enhancing cognitive abilities
• The effects of music on stress reduction and relaxation
• The cultural significance of music in indigenous communities
• The influence of music on fashion and style trends
• The evolution of protest music and its impact on society
• The effects of music on Alzheimer’s disease
• The intersection of music and technology in the music industry
• The effects of music on emotional intelligence and empathy
• The cultural significance of hip hop music in the African diaspora
• The influence of music on human behavior and decision-making
• The effects of music on physical performance and exercise
• The role of music in promoting social and political activism

Research Paper Topics On Music

• The effects of music on the brain and mental health
• The impact of streaming on the music industry
• The history and evolution of rap music
• The cultural significance of traditional folk music
• The use of music in video games to enhance the gaming experience
• The role of music in religious and spiritual practices
• The effects of music on memory and learning
• The development of rock and roll in America
• The intersection of music and politics in the 21st century
• The cultural significance of country music in the South
• The use of music in autism therapy
• The impact of social media on music promotion and marketing
• The influence of music on the LGBTQ+ community
• The effects of music on social behavior and interaction

Argumentative Essay Topics About Music

• Does music have a negative effect on behavior?
• Is streaming music harming the music industry?
• Can music censorship be justified in certain cases?
• Is cultural appropriation a problem in the music industry?
• Should musicians be held accountable for controversial lyrics?
• Is autotune a helpful tool or a crutch for musicians?
• Should music education be a required part of the curriculum?
• Is the use of explicit lyrics in music harmful?
• Should music festivals be required to have safety measures?
• Does the use of profanity in music undermine its artistic value?
• Can music be used to promote political messages effectively?
• Should musicians be allowed to profit from tragedies?

Current Music Topics To Write About In 2023

• The rise of TikTok and its impact on music promotion
• The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on UK music
• The use of virtual concerts and live streaming during COVID-19
• The influence of social media on music consumption and trends
• The emergence of new genres and sub-genres in popular music
• Talk about cancel culture in music
• The debate over the use of explicit lyrics in music
• The impact of climate change on music festivals and events
• The use of artificial intelligence in music production and composition
• The influence of music on political and social movements
• The rise of female and non-binary artists in the music industry
• The effects of globalization on the diversity of music around the world
• The role of nostalgia in the popularity of music from past decades

Musical Topics About Famous Musicians

• The life and legacy of Beethoven
• The impact of Elvis Presley on rock and roll
• The career and contributions of Bob Dylan
• The influence of Michael Jackson on pop music
• The musical evolution of Madonna over time
• The enduring appeal of the Rolling Stones
• The career of Prince and his impact on music
• The contributions of David Bowie to pop culture
• The iconic sound of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar
• The impact of Whitney Houston on the music industry
• The life and career of Freddie Mercury of Queen
• The artistry and impact of Joni Mitchell
• The groundbreaking work of Stevie Wonder in R&B
• The musical legacy of the Beatles and their influence on pop music

Music Research Paper Topics For College

• The cultural significance of the accordion in folk music
• The use of sampling in hip-hop and electronic music production
• The evolution of the drum kit in popular music
• The significance of Taylor Swift in contemporary country-pop music
• The effects of drug abuse in the music industry
• The role of music in shaping political movements and protests
• The impact of streaming services on the music industry and artists’ income
• The significance of the Burning Man festival in music and culture
• The emergence and growth of Afrobeat music globally
• The role of musical collaboration in the creation of new music genres
• The use of autotune and other vocal processing tools in pop music
• The effects of social and political issues on rap music lyrics
• The significance of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in pop culture
• The impact of music on emotional regulation and mental health

Our Controversial Music Topics

• The controversy of the “cancel culture” in US music
• The impact of music piracy on the industry and artists
• The ethical concerns of music sampling without permission
• The controversy surrounding lip-syncing during live performances
• The debate over the authenticity of auto-tune in music
• The controversy surrounding the use of profanity in music
• The debate over the cultural appropriation of music styles
• The controversy surrounding music festivals and their impact on local communities
• The debate over the role of music in promoting violence and aggression
• The controversy surrounding the ownership of an artist’s discography
• The ethical concerns of musicians profiting from songs about tragedies and disasters

Captivating Music Thesis Topics

• The role of music in promoting social justice
• The impact of music streaming on album sales
• The significance of lyrics in contemporary pop music
• The evolution of heavy metal music over time
• The influence of gospel music on rock and roll
• The effects of music education on cognitive development
• The cultural significance of hip-hop music in America
• The role of music in promoting environmental awareness and activism
• The impact of music festivals on local economies
• The evolution of country music and its impact on popular music
• The use of music in advertising and marketing strategies

Classical Music Topic Ideas

• The influence of Baroque music on classical music
• The history and evolution of the symphony orchestra
• The career and legacy of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• The significance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
• The evolution of opera as an art form
• The role of women composers in classical music history
• The impact of the Romantic era on classical music
• The use of program music to tell a story through music
• The significance of the concerto in classical music
• The influence of Johann Sebastian Bach on classical music
• The contributions of Antonio Vivaldi to the concerto form
• The use of counterpoint in classical music composition
• The role of chamber music in classical music history
• The significance of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah in classical music

Interesting Music Topics For High School

• The history and evolution of the piano as a musical instrument
• The significance of Beethoven in classical music
• The impact of Elvis Presley on US music
• The emergence and growth of the hip-hop music genre
• The role of music festivals in contemporary music culture
• The effects of technology on music production and performance
• The influence of social media on music promotion and distribution
• The effects of music on mental health and well-being
• The role of music in popular culture and media
• The impact of musical soundtracks on movies and TV shows
• The use of music therapy for individuals with autism spectrum disorder
• The significance of the Coachella Music Festival in modern music culture
• The cultural significance of the ukulele in Hawaiian culture

Awesome Music Research Questions For 2023

• Should musicians be required to use their platform to promote social justice causes?
• Is music piracy a victimless crime or does it harm the industry?
• Should music venues be required to provide safe spaces for concertgoers?
• Is the Grammy Awards selection process biased towards mainstream artists?
• Should music streaming services pay musicians higher royalties?
• Is it appropriate for music to be used in political campaign advertisements?
• Should music journalists be required to disclose their personal biases in reviews?
• Is it ethical for musicians to profit from songs about tragedies and disasters?
• Should music education be funded equally across all schools and districts?
• Is it fair for record labels to own the rights to an artist’s entire discography?
• Should music festivals have more diverse and inclusive lineups?
• Should musicians be allowed to use drugs and alcohol as part of their creative process?

Fantastic Music Topics For Research

• The evolution of the electric guitar in rock music
• The cultural significance of the sitar in Indian music
• The impact of synthesizers on contemporary music production
• The use of technology in the creation and performance of music
• The influence of Beyoncé on modern pop music
• The significance of Kendrick Lamar in contemporary rap music
• The effects of misogyny and sexism in the rap music industry
• The emergence and growth of K-pop music globally
• The significance of Coachella Music Festival in the music industry
• The history and evolution of the Woodstock Music Festival
• The impact of music festivals on tourism and local economies
• The role of music festivals in shaping music trends and culture
• The effects of music piracy on the music industry
• The impact of social media on the promotion and distribution of music
• The role of music in the Black Lives Matter movement

Catchy Music Related Research Topics

• Is hip-hop culture beneficial or harmful to society?
• Is it ethical to sample music without permission?
• Should music streaming services censor explicit content?
• Is auto-tune a valid musical technique or a crutch?
• Does the music industry unfairly exploit young artists?
• Should radio stations be required to play a certain percentage of local music?
• Is the practice of lip-syncing during live performances acceptable?
• Is music education undervalued and underfunded in schools?
• Does the use of profanity in music contribute to a decline in society?
• Should music venues be held accountable for the safety of concertgoers?

Informative Speech Topics About Music

• The history and evolution of jazz music
• The cultural significance of classical music in Europe
• The origins and development of blues music in America
• The influence of Latin American music on American popular music
• The impact of technology on music production and distribution
• The role of music in expressing emotions and feelings
• The effects of music therapy on mental health and wellbeing
• The cultural significance of traditional music in Africa
• The use of music in films and television to create mood and atmosphere
• The influence of the Beatles on popular music and culture
• The evolution of electronic dance music (EDM)
• The role of music in promoting cultural diversity and unity
• The impact of social media on the music industry and fan culture

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Music Review: Electro-pop duo Sofi Tukker dances to own beat on new energetic album 'BREAD'

Electro-poppers Sofi Tukker's third album is titled “BREAD,” an acronym for “Be Really Energetic and Dance."

Electro-poppers Sofi Tukker's third studio album, “BREAD,” is an acronym for “Be Really Energetic and Dance,” a mantra that the Grammy-nominated American duo of Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern have long embraced.

But before it was an abbreviation, “BREAD” was a literal reference. They view the doughy food as a kind of physical embodiment of energy; the carbohydrates keep them moving. And on “BREAD,” they want their music to do the same for their listeners.

Sofi Tukker is known to animate. Festival crowds have been drawn to the dynamic, colorful sets and multilingual, genre-agnostic sounds since 2017, when Sofi Tukker first played Coachella — a year before the release of the duo's debut album “Treehouse.” Companies like Apple and Peloton have tapped their songs for campaigns, looking to harness some of their natural momentum. And while creating bossa-nova, jungle- and house-inspired pop has always been their bread and butter, they’re also trusted DJs with repeat gigs in the party capitals of Las Vegas and Ibiza, Spain.

With “Be Really Energetic and Dance” as a thesis statement, the new album is joyful even when it references less-than-optimistic subjects. Take “Throw Some Ass,” the album’s lead single.

"Hey Doctor? Can you give me something stronger? / I’ve tried everything you’ve offered,” Hawley-Weld lists the remedies she’s tried until landing on what works. “Throw some ass, free the mind," she sings before the beat drops. There's a deeper truth behind the feel-good approach — there's a pain the dance masks.

And it works: the song pairs Hawley-Weld's soft-sung, winking lyrics with chants and electric dance breaks by Halpern, to push forward their salve for suffering.

That’s felt on the lively “Spiral,” which reframes the time spent on a relationship post break up, and “Guardian Angel (Stand By You),” which finds support in dark times.

Nothing is predictable in Sofi Tukker's collaged jungle-pop, but the creations are also intentionally accessible, as good dance music must be.

That's true in “Cafuné," written with Brazilian poet Chacal. The title, which doesn't translate perfectly into English, is universal. That's because the song opens with rapper Channel Tres laying out the band's global approach: “I've never had anyone run their fingers through my hair like that before / You can't even translate this type of s—-.” The setup gives listeners unfamiliar with the word the context to realize that it is a sensual idea, further emphasized by a staccato beat and Channel Tres' slow-talking.

“Woof," which features Nigerian singer-songwriter Kah-Lo, is another example: Halpern repeats the song’s central refrain, “I'll make you woof,” in his lowest register. Hawley-Weld’s lyrics grab phrases from four languages — English, French, German and Portuguese — Kah-Lo provides a verse in English and Yoruba, and the underlying track unites the seemingly-disparate vocal sections into a sort of controlled chaos.

“Don’t need the alphabet to say I want you,” Hawley-Weld croons toward the song's end. They'll draw from their own instead. And it will be a good time.

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CBC SETS FALL 2024 STREAMING AND BROADCAST PREMIERE DATES FOR NEW AND RETURNING ORIGINAL SERIES ON CBC GEM AND CBC TV

Following its world premiere at TIFF 2024, Tanya Talaga’s docuseries THE KNOWING (September 25) offers a deeply personal look at Canada's Indian residential school system

Co-commissioned with BBC and from executive producers Idris and Sabrina Elba, docuseries PAID IN FULL: THE BATTLE FOR BLACK MUSIC (September 21 on CBC Gem) explores the history of racial injustice in the music industry and Black artists’ ongoing fight for fair compensation, narrated by Canadian music icon Jully Black

CBC News’ flagship investigative series THE FIFTH ESTATE (October 11) marks its 50th anniversary season

DRAGONS’ DEN (September 26) welcomes new Dragon Brian Scudamore and celebrity Dragon  Simu Liu 

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (Kim’s Convenience) joins MURDOCH MYSTERIES (September 30 on CBC Gem) as the new Inspector at Station House #4

The third season of docuseries YOU CAN’T ASK THAT (September 13 on CBC Gem) continues to provide a platform for disabled Canadians to speak candidly about their experiences 

THE PASSIONATE EYE premieres with 2024 Hot Docs Audience Award winner Yintah (September 18), following the Wet’suwet’en nation’s fight for sovereignty

Returning audience favourites include THIS HOUR HAS 22 MINUTES (September 17, featuring a one-hour U.S. election special on November 4), THE NEW WAVE OF STANDUP (September 24), HEARTLAND (September 29 on CBC Gem), THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW (October 6), STILL STANDING (October 8) and MARKETPLACE (October 11) 

CBC today announced streaming and broadcast premiere dates for its fall 2024 slate of new and returning programming on CBC Gem and CBC TV , including more than 20 original series and specials from Canadian creators, producers, and storytellers reflecting people, places and perspectives from across the country. The first episode of all series will be available to stream on CBC Gem starting at 9 a.m. ET on their premiere dates noted below with a new episode available weekly at the same time, unless otherwise specified. CBC TV local broadcast times are noted in parentheses ( for Newfoundland and Labrador, please add half an hour to all times ).

*Images from CBC fall 2024 titles are available here .* Please credit Courtesy of CBC.

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• PAID IN FULL: THE BATTLE FOR BLACK MUSIC *New Documentary Series* (3x60) - All episodes available Saturday, September 21 on CBC Gem (Premieres on CBC TV on Wednesday, October 23 at 8 p.m.)

Narrated by Canadian music icon Jully Black, PAID IN FULL: THE BATTLE FOR BLACK MUSIC   explores the systemic racism faced by Black artists in the music industry from its inception to the digital streaming age, and the artists’ ongoing fight for fair pay and racial justice. 

• THE KNOWING *New Documentary Series* (4x60) - Premieres Wednesday, September 25 (8 p.m.)

In this TIFF 2024 Primetime selection, journalist, filmmaker, and award-winning Anishnaabe author Tanya Talaga goes on a quest for the truth of what happened to the women in her maternal family, revealing a story intertwined with Canada's Indian Residential School system.

Returning Series

• CORONATION STREET - ongoing (weekdays at 7 p.m.; Fridays at 7:30 p.m.)
• YOU CAN’T ASK THAT *Season 3* (8x30) - All episodes available Friday, September 13 on CBC Gem (Premieres on CBC TV on Wednesday, September 18 at 11:30 p.m.)
• THIS HOUR HAS 22 MINUTES *Season 32* (24x30 + 1x60) - Premieres Tuesday, September 17 (8 p.m.), with a one-hour U.S. election special on Monday, November 4 at 8 p.m.  
• THE PASSIONATE EYE (8x60 + 1x120) - Premieres Wednesday, September 18 (8 p.m., 9 p.m. beginning September 25)

THE PASSIONATE EYE returns with a new season of thought-provoking original documentaries, beginning with 2024 Hot Docs Audience Award winner Yintah , following the Wet’suwet’en nation’s fight for sovereignty over the course of more than a decade, as they protect their ancestral lands from some of the largest fossil fuel companies on earth.

• THE NEW WAVE OF STANDUP *Seasons 4 and 5* (8x30) - Premieres Tuesday, September 24 at 9:30 p.m. on CBC TV (Season 4 available to stream now and Season 5 premieres Friday, September 6 on CBC Gem)
• DRAGONS’ DEN *Season 19* (12x60) - Premieres Thursday, September 26 (8 p.m.)

Season 19 sees 1-800-GOT-JUNK? founder and CEO Brian Scudamore enter the Den, and actor, producer, author and ambassador Simu Liu joins as a celebrity guest Dragon for four episodes. 

• HEARTLAND *Season 18* (10x60) - Premieres Sunday, September 29 on CBC Gem (Sunday, October 6 at 7 p.m. on CBC TV)
• THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW *Season 8* (8x60) - Premieres Sunday, October 6 (8 p.m.)
• MURDOCH MYSTERIES *Season 18* (22x60) - Premieres Monday, September 30 on CBC Gem (Monday, October 7 at 8 p.m. on CBC TV)

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (Kim’s Convenience, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Mandalorian) joins the cast of MURDOCH MYSTERIES as Inspector Albert Choi for Season 18, which will also celebrate the series’ 300th episode. 

• PLAN B *Season 2* (6x60) - Premieres Monday, October 7 at 9 p.m. on CBC TV (streaming now on CBC Gem)
• STILL STANDING *Season 10* (8x30) - Premieres Tuesday, October 8 (8:30 p.m.) 

Host Jonny Harris embarks on more adventures in small towns across the country, from Prince Rupert, BC, to New Glasgow, NS, and everywhere in between.

CBC News 

• ABOUT THAT WITH ANDREW CHANG (15x30) - Premieres Friday, September 20 at 8:30 p.m. on CBC TV (Available to stream weekday mornings on CBC Gem and CBC News Explore)
• MARKETPLACE *Season 52* (14x30) - Premieres Friday, October 11 (8 p.m.) 

This season, CBC News’ consumer affairs program joins forces with some of the world's top scambusters, cracks into the networks of organized criminal groups, confronts the fraudsters in real time, and exposes how AI is making it harder to defend ourselves. 

• THE FIFTH ESTATE *Season 50* (14x60) - Premieres Friday, October 11 (9 p.m.)

CBC News’ flagship investigative series celebrates its 50th anniversary with a special project to address the troubling decline in local journalism across Canada.

• THE NATIONAL - ongoing (live at 10 p.m. weekdays and Sundays on CBC TV and CBC Gem) 

CBC’s flagship national newscast with Chief Correspondent Adrienne Arsenault (Monday - Thursday) and Ian Hanomansing (Friday and Sunday) offers ongoing and in-depth coverage of the upcoming U.S. election this fall.

• CBC MORNING LIVE WITH HEATHER HISCOX (Weekday mornings on CBC TV and CBC News Network)
• CANADA TONIGHT WITH TRAVIS DHANRAJ (Weeknights on CBC News Network)
• POWER & POLITICS WITH DAVID COCHRANE (Weeknights on CBC News Network)
• ROSEMARY BARTON LIVE (Sundays on CBC TV and CBC News Network)

CBC Sports 

• CBC SPORTS PRESENTS - ongoing (live on Saturday and Sunday afternoons on CBC TV and CBC Gem)

Following Team Canada’s success at the Olympic Games Paris 2024, and with the Paralympic Games underway beginning August 28, CBC SPORTS will continue to follow high-performance athletes this fall including World Volleyball Beach Pro Tour Elite 16 Finals (Dec. 5-8 in Doha, Qatar) and World Aquatics Swimming Championship (Dec. 10-15 in Budapest, Hungary). The winter season kicks off with ISU Short Track Speed Skating World Cup (Oct. 25-27 in Montreal, Que.) and FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup (Dec. 7-8 in Tremblant, Que.), and the USports Championships (Oct. 19 - Nov. 16), including the Vanier Cup (Nov. 23 in Kingston, Ont.), return to showcase Canada’s top university and college athletes. CBC SPORTS will also once again offer coverage of the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating event series including Skate Canada (Oct. 25 - 27, Halifax, NS). 

CBC Kids Originals

• GO TOGO *New Series* (27x5) - All episodes available to stream on CBC Gem, and premieres on CBC TV, Monday, September 2 (airs Monday through Friday)

Produced using real animatronic characters and handmade sets, the new CBC Kids preschool series follows Togo the subway car and his friends Stella the streetcar and Wheeler the bus, as they make stops, pick up passengers, and explore the big city of Transitville. The series will introduce three to five year-olds to early math concepts through the fun and excitement of big public transit vehicles (in miniature scale). 

• JEREMY & JAZZY *Season 2* (28x2) - First 10 episodes available Monday, September 2 on CBC Gem (Premieres Monday, September 9 on CBC TV, airs Monday through Friday)

The JUNO and Canadian Screen Award-nominated animated preschool series, about how music and friendship create joy, returns for a new season, with season premiere episode “Hopscotch” featuring Barenaked Ladies . 

• PLAYING WITH STU *New Series* (40x1) - All episodes available Monday, September 2 on CBC Gem (Premieres Monday, September 9 on CBC TV, airs Monday through Friday)

A spinoff of JEREMY & JAZZY, join Stu the mouse and his friends as they have fun trying new things, making mistakes, and exploring the world around them.

• BESTEST DAY EVER WITH MY BEST FRIEND *Season 2* (7x21) - All episodes available Friday, November 22 on CBC Gem (Premieres Sunday, November 24 on CBC TV)

Host Lisette returns with more adorable animals and more surprises in this live-action preschool series that celebrates the bond between kids and their pets. 

About CBC Gem

CBC Gem is Canada’s streaming service, offering more than 6500 hours of live and on-demand Canadian programming and a curated selection of acclaimed, best-in-class content from around the world, including more than 800 documentaries, 500 hours of ad-free content for kids and tweens, and a collection of over 200 Canadian feature films. CBC Gem is available free as an app for iOS and Android devices and online at CBCGem.ca , and on TV screens via Roku, Samsung, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, LG, Google Chromecast,  Android TV and Xbox.   

About CBC/Radio-Canada

CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada’s national public broadcaster. Through our mandate to inform, enlighten and entertain, we play a central role in strengthening Canadian culture. As Canada’s trusted news source, we offer a uniquely Canadian perspective on news, current affairs and world affairs. Our distinctively homegrown entertainment programming draws audiences from across the country. Deeply rooted in communities, CBC/Radio-Canada offers diverse content in English, French and eight Indigenous languages. We also deliver content in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Punjabi and Tagalog, as well as both official languages, through Radio Canada International (RCI). We are leading the transformation to meet the needs of Canadians in a digital world.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Tanya Koivusalo, CBC PR

[email protected]

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