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Filling the data gaps of the music sector

On 21 September 2023, Open Music Europe held its first stakeholder meeting in Bratislava about filling the data gaps in the music sector.

Slovakia plays an essential role in our project. Cultural and music policies are designed and implemented nationally, not at the EU level. State statistical programs also collected data on the national level. To fill the data gaps in the European music sector, we must address the practices of member states. Therefore, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic and its Institute for Cultural Policy after our kick-off meeting. We initiated cooperation with the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, its Institute of Informatics and Statistics and other relevant stakeholders like the Slovak Music Information Center or cultural experts of the Bratislava region. For the first time in Europe, the parties committed themselves to adopting the Open Policy Analysis Guidelines, which extends the best practices of reproducible and open scientific research to the analysis of public policies.

After an analysis of the KPIs and measurement programs of three Slovak public policies, the Slovak Cultural and Creative Industries for 2030 [Stratégia kultúry a kreatívneho priemyslu Slovenskej republiky 2030], Slovakia’s Vision and Development Strategy 2030 – a long-term strategy for sustainable development (Ministerstva investícií, regionálneho rozvoja a informatizácie Slovenskej republiky) and the 2030 Digital Transformation Strategy for Slovakia (Ministerstva investícií, regionálneho rozvoja a informatizácie) the experts of the Open Music Consortium identified critical data needs. They presented novel methodologies to fill these needs.

At the stakeholder forum held at the Economic University Bratislava (EUBA), our consortium member, Dr Joost Poort (leader of the music economy work package), gave an overview and introduction to the research carried out in the project’s first phase. (Since we apply OPA, all documents of this work can be reviewed, commented on, and even improved here). Daniel Antal, CFA presented the best practices for combining government statistical programs with so-called privately-held data of scientific and music organisations. Dr James Edwards went into further detail about coordinating data collection in scientific and business organisations and our Open Music Europe Consortium, with the existing survey programs of Slovakia and the European Union. Magr. Tomas Miks, a member of the management board of SOZA, presented the vision of the Slovak Comprehensive Music Database, and its application family, Listen Local, which would help statisticians, rights management organisations, music businesses, music education and music heritage organisations to synchronise the best possible data and metadata on Slovak music.

After a half day of discussions continuing, eventually, in a more informal setting, we agreed with the national stakeholders to continue more technical discussions about our data program on 10 October 2023. As always, our materials are open for public scrutiny, suggestions, and improvements.

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