Fair MusE: Promoting Fairness of the Music Ecosystem in a Platform-Dominated and Post-Pandemic Europe

Project description

Fair MusE is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under Grant agreement ID: 101095088.

The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Continue reading.

About the project

The overarching goal of Fair MusE is to promote fairness for music creators and stakeholders from an interdisciplinary perspective, thus leading to a more competitive and sustainable music ecosystem in Europe.

The project will provide an innovative and future-proof set of co-created responses and solutions aimed at promoting and enhancing transparency in music industry practices, standardisation in data collection, recommendations and awareness around risks created by the reinforced dominance of the largest online platforms.

FairMusE is a 3-year project funded by Horizon Europe. It aims to help the music ecosystem become more fair and transparent at a time it struggles with the over-dominance of social media platforms and streaming services in a post-pandemic Europe.

With a total budget of €3m from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme and 11 partners from 9 different countries.

Our role - how is Fair MusE project related to the Faculty of Law of the University of Tartu?

This project includes Estonia as one of the countries to be covered in its analysis. The project aims to identify how the Copyright Directive is implemented at national level and how national rules materialise the rights of music creators.

Being a research focused on digitalization, the project and its members at the University of Tartu are connected to the School's IT law programme.

Prof Marta Cantero Gamito, PI of the project, and Prof Aleksei Kelli, Professor in IP Law, will investigate how regulation contributes to the fair remuneration of music creators.

The consortium is composed of several universities and industry partners, facilitating cooperation among higher education institutions and establiushing connections outside academia.

This project will produce policy-oriented research. The overarching goal of Fair MusE is to promote fairness for music creators and stakeholders from an interdisciplinary perspective, thus leading to a more transparent, competitive and sustainable music ecosystem in Europe.

Fair MusE focuses specifically on the domination of online platforms and their algorithms and will investigate:

the legal responses that have been proposed in the EU;
the changes these platforms have brought to the music industry and music professionals; and
the impact of such algorithms on music consumption.

Fair MusE will provide an interdisciplinary analysis of fairness in the music industry involving music creators and stakeholders in the research; promote and enhance transparency concerning music industry practices and standardisation in data collection in the European music ecosystem; and assess the risks created by the reinforced dominance of the largest online platforms prompted by COVID 19 as well as making policymakers, stakeholders and the general public aware of such risks.

To do so, Fair MusE will provide an innovative, strong and future-proof set of co-created responses and solutions:

the 'Music Copyright Infrastructure', a data-sharing model agreement enhancing transparency;
a 'Music Data Dashboard' of statistical indicators on the economic and societal value of the European music sector;
the 'Fairness Score', a tool to assess music services and social media in terms of fairness’ multiple facets;
and a ‘White Paper’ embodying policy recommendations to enhance competitiveness, sustainability, transparency and fairness of the EU music ecosystem.

Our consortium is a carefully designed interdisciplinary group of academic and industry partners with strong expertise in the fields of law, economics, political science and computer science, supported by an Advisory Board composed of a highly qualified and broadly representative group of industry experts.

For more information please contact: Marta Cantero Gamito, marta.cantero.gamito@ut.ee