Music And Society

Indicators related to music participation and access in European societies

We will mainly rely on the integration of existing, but fragmented and not well-formatted data, and existing, but not processed and not published data to create pan-European indicators for the music and society section.

Pillar 3 - Music & Society

Topic

Description

pillarproblemavailabilityfeasibility
Pillar 3Music schools and conservatoriesData gapNational statistical institutes, government data
Pillar 3Music education - formal practicesData gapNational statistical institutes, government data, European Association for Music in Schools.
Pillar 3Music education - informal practicesData gapThe Feasibility Study did not address this, but in popular music, informal learning practices are far-far more important. We will address this issues.
Pillar 3Training schemes for music professionalsData gapLack of European data on the state of training for music professionals
Pillar 3Training schemes for artistData gapLack of European data on the state of training for artists.
Pillar 3Music educationData gapLack of European data on the state of music education.
Pillar 3Consumer patterns regarding piracy and its impact on the music sectorAvailableSome countries like France with Hadopi have attempted to evaluate the way consumers access illegally music while setting up educational campaigns on piracy, similar to the UK initiative Get It Right. Materials/studies are also provided by EUIPO.
Pillar 3EU consumers and musicData gapNo authoritative assessment of the relationship between consumers and music at pan-European level
Pillar 3Social networks and musicData gapNo authoritative assessment of how European consumers interact with music on social networks
Pillar 3Consumer patterns regarding piracy and its impact on the music sectorAvailableLimited pan-European data on the impact of piracy but also on the motivations to consumer music content via illegal sources. EUIPO does have some data on the economic cost of IPR infringement in the recorded music industry.
Pillar 3Scope of the not-for-profit sector in EuropeData gapNo mapping of the not-for-profit music sector in Europe, in particular in exposing new talent and forging social cohesion.
Pillar 3Social impact of music in communitiesData gapAlthough there is some academic research available, there is no co-ordination of research on the social impact of music in Europe.

CEEMID has collected hundreds of indicators since 2014 on this topic. We would like to invite our partners to find a few relevant indicators and publish them here. Some of these indicators require explicit permission from public bodies or from partners, given existing data acquisition costs.

Audiences

We have been carefully following the surveying guidance of the Final Report of the Working Group European Statistical System Network on Culture (in short: ESSnet-Culture) detailed guidelines can be found in the report of the Task Force on Cultural Practices And Social Aspects Of Culture.

So far, CEEMID has carried out 7 detailed, nationally representative CAP surveys for music and audiovisual use, which it retrospectively harmonized with EU 2007 and EU 2013 surveys. See further information here.

Education, training, personal development

When we presented the case-study on national and comparative evidence-based policymaking in the cultural and creative sector on the CCS Ecosystems: FLIPPING THE ODDS Conference (see an edited version of the presentation in our blogpost with further details), we emphasised a very important structural problem of the creative sectors that is a very significant burden in the case of the music industry, too.

In the music industry, most enterprises are sole proprietorships, micro- or small enterprises which do not possess strategic human resources (HR) and research and development (R&D) functions. Because music is a high-labor added, high-value added sector, participation in lifelong learning programs would be crucial, but very difficult to organize. Companies with 1-2 employees do not have specialized management and support functions, and thus have a very strong handicap in HR and R&D.

“A good example of this problem is the motion picture and TV industry. These industries were comprised of medium-sized enterprises in the 1980s with significant in-house education functions. The current structure of these industries, however, resembles music, with almost all enterprises staying below the 5-person threshold. In our experience, based on development needs assessments in the Hungarian motion picture and the Czech music industry, this creates an acute skills and labor shortage. Missing skills cannot be replaced appropriately through recruitment or with strategic HR development via life-long learning.

In addition to very reduced opportunities to participate in, and create life-long learning schemes, there are very little chances to engage in market research and R&D. While the music industry, for example, is one of the most data-driven industries in the world, the micro-enterprise size does not allow these enterprises to commission market research or hire data scientists. This leads to very asymmetrical relationships with the main distributors of music and media content on platforms that are owned by global data companies."*

Our surveys are not only asking about the professional development of music professionals, but in some cases, they are designed to create industry-level vocational training programs.

Daniel Antal
Daniel Antal
Data Scientist & Founder of the Digital Music Observatory

My research interests include reproducible social science, economics and finance.