Reliable – Dec 2025
Policy can be viewed at both the macro and micro level. At the macro level we have international, European and national legislators creating policy that society (and in our case, the music sector) must follow. At the micro level we have policies that organisations such as CMOs create to ensure that their members are treated as fairly as possible.
At the heart of both of these situations, is the need for reliable data. Without reliable data one proceeds on the basis of guess work and runs the risk that policies developed will not achieve their goal, or worse, will no longer be supported.
For the past three years, data has been at the heart of Music360, exploring how European policies striving for fair remuneration for musicians can be strengthened. This specifically for what concerns the use of music in public spaces.
We are fortunate in the EU that such policies exist and have been translated into legal obligations for users to remunerate musicians for the use of their music, in part thanks to the work of CMOs demonstrating the need to collect this remuneration, so that musicians can sustain a career. Those in the US are less fortunate. When their music is played publicly, they don’t receive any remuneration.
At a time when the music ecosystem is under severe pressure and unfair competition from free models is a major concern, it is essential that the EU can justify its policies in this regard with the right data.
For CMOs it is vital that they receive accurate data to inform them of the way in which the music they represent has been used by users like shops, bars and other public places. The better data they receive, the more accurate the distribution of remuneration to those responsible for creating that music.
Currently, CMOs use a variety of methods to estimate what music is used in these various public spaces, with very little responsibility being placed on the user itself. Without a proper cooperation between users and rightholders, it is impossible for CMOs to know exactly how many times a particular track was played in a particular venue over a particular timeframe.
CMOs have the advantage that the EU Collective Rights Management Directive (2014/26/EU) obliges users to provide them with all information necessary for the distribution and payment of amounts due to the rightholders they represent (Art. 17). However, this obligation must be viewed in light of the principle to conduct all licensing negotiations in good faith and comes with the assignment for both parties to strive for voluntary industry standards.
A CMO cannot unilaterally impose a format that shifts all administrative burdens to the users. Effectively implementing the right to be fairly remunerated requires a partnership between CMOs and users to combine forces to ensure that the musicians that add value are remunerated fairly and accurately. Users must be enabled to share the data they have in a user-friendly way.
The Music360 project assessed the added value that music creates for these users and looked for ways to provide CMOs with accurate data so that they can remunerate artists more accurately. Part of this challenge was developing a platform that allows users to share any form of data about their usage with the CMOs, focusing primarily on sharing data that is already available, such as playlists provided to the user by their background music provider.
With this platform Music360 paves the way for sector specific industry standards to develop and identify all possible ways in which users and CMOs can collaborate to the benefit of all. This has been a step in the right direction but further work needs to be done.
Music360 is not alone in recognising the need for further work to be done in this area. Indeed, the European Commission itself has remarked upon the need for an EU cultural data hub. Its initiative recognises that the cultural and creative sectors cannot be expected to thrive in an environment where data remains fragmented, inaccessible, or incomplete. By creating a shared European infrastructure for the collection, interoperability and exchange of cultural data, the Commission aims to ensure that in addition to policy-makers, the entire cultural ecosystem will have access to evidence-based insights that are comparable across countries and sub-sectors.
For the music sector, such a data space could be transformative. It would allow for a far more detailed mapping of how music circulates, how value is generated, and how remuneration reaches performers, authors and producers. It could also provide the information needed to distinguish between human-created and AI-generated content in the future — a distinction that will become increasingly important for policy design.
Although certainly ambitious, a European cultural data hub would help reduce the imbalance between powerful commercial actors who have extensive access to usage metrics and the creators and CMOs whose resources are much less. It could also support transparency and accountability in policy areas such as AI training, platform content moderation and cultural diversity.
If Europe is serious about maintaining a sustainable and competitive music ecosystem, high-quality data resources are not an optional extra—they are a necessity for future-proof cultural policy.
Music360 