Increasing Transparency in Digital Music Markets : Regulatory Pathways Beyond Copyright Law?[*]This article has been peer-reviewed., [**]This paper explores results from the comprehensive study ‘Roles of EU competition law and platform regulation across online music platforms’, conducted for the project Fair MusE (Promoting Fairness of the Music Ecosystem in a Platform-Dominated and Post-Pandemic Europe), funded by the programme Horizon Europe (Grant agreement ID: 101095088) to investigate and promote fairness for music creators and stakeholders in digital music markets. The comprehensive study will be made publicly available in the course of 2026.
By Maria Jose Schmidt-Kessen, Gil Dagan, Marta Cantero Gamito and Eirini Volikou[***]Maria Jose Schmidt-Kessen is Assistant Professor, Legal Studies Department, Central European University, Vienna. Marta Cantero Gamito is Professor of IT Law, University of Tartu and Research Fellow, Florence School of Transnational Governance (EUI). Gil Dagan is PhD Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich. Eirini Volikou is Jurisconsult in Competition Law, Data Protection, Legal Training and Project Management, Porto.
1. Introduction
Music markets have long been criticised for a lack of adequate and transparent information on the exploitation of musical works and concerns regarding the working conditions for music creators.[1]Hans-Jurgen Homann, Praxishandbuch Musikrecht (Springer 2006), 270; David Hesmondhalgh, “Is music streaming bad for musicians? Problems of evidence and argument” (2020) New Media & Society, 23(12), 3593–3615. Initial hopes that the rise of online music consumption might bring a significant change to this data transparency problem have not sufficiently materialised.[2]Ibid. (Hesmondhalgh). A variety of international and national bodies have tried to study and address existing imbalances in digital music markets between music authors and performers on the one hand and online platforms where music is exploited on the other.[3]See, e.g. Christian L. Castle, Christian L. and Claudio Feijóo, “WIPO Study on the Artists in the Digital Music Marketplace: Economic and Legal Considerations” (WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, 2021) <https://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=540735>; Competition and Markets Authority, “Music and Streaming Market Study: Final Report.” (2022). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/music-andstreaming-market-study-final-report. In the European Union (EU), one of the main legislative reactions to the radical changes that digitisation and the rise of online platforms has brought to music and other creative sectors, and the resulting impact for the exploitation of copyright and related rights, has been the Directive for Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive).[4]Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC. The Directive was enacted in 2019, and Member States had to transpose it into national law by 2021.
One of the regulatory innovations of the DSM Directive is contained in Article 19. Article 19 enshrines a transparency obligation to the benefit of authors and performers to receive, at least once a year, “up to date, relevant and comprehensive information on the exploitation of their works and performances from the parties to whom they have licensed or transferred their rights”, including from sub-licensees (e.g., digital platforms that get their licenses for the exploitation of music from record labels). This obligation is further informed by Recital 74, which recognises the importance of information to enable authors and performers to assess the economic value of their rights, in particular where exploitation is licensed in exchange for remuneration. Recital 75 further stresses that “the sharing of adequate and accurate information by their contractual counterparts or their successors in title is important for the transparency and balance in the system governing the remuneration of authors and performers”. The recital further specifies that “that information should be up-to-date to allow access to recent data, relevant to the exploitation of the work or performance, and comprehensive in a way that it covers all sources of revenues relevant to the case, including, where applicable, merchandising revenues”.
