Security – September 2025
In the Horizon Europe MUSIC360 project, we aim to understand the value of music. But there is a problem with security and privacy in the data sharing and processing needed to achieve our goal. For example, EU policymakers are interested in music’s economic impact, like the average increased revenue that venues (e.g., restaurants, gyms) gain by playing music. But venues won’t share private financial data, fearing leaks or unfair fees from CMO licenses. Traditional privacy protection technologies fail in such scenario because we cannot avoid someone willsee the raw data for calculate averages.
We use techniques from Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) to overcome these problems. Using these techniques we can compute results from data without ever revealing data that must remain secret.
For example, in the Prio+ algorithm, venues, called Prio+ clients, provide data in the form of encrypted “shares” to compute servers, who then collaboratively compute results, such as average revenue, and send this to a result party. The result party never sees the data from which the result is computed.
We are also working on a decision-mapping framework to simplify applying SMPC in real-world. The framework matches business needs (e.g., trust level, cost limitation) to technical features, helping non-experts choose the appropriate SMPC protocol. We used this procedure in prototyping the security scenario shown above.
Secure data collaboration among multiple parties is always a big problem in digital business ecosystems like MUSIC360. Our work makes advanced privacy computation techniques more practical and accessible, so data can be shared for a computation without leaking secrets.
Music360 