Trustworthy AI | CCSI Data Observatory

Reprex Wins Audience Prize in The Hague Innovators Challenge

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 18:00:00 +0100

Reprex won the Audience Prize in The Hague Innovators Challenge - with about as many votes as the 7 other contenters combined. We really wanted to prove that big data can work for small organizations, too.

Congratulations for WECO for the startup prize, and our partners, BeeSage, for the pre-startup price. You will hear from BeeSage and Reprex more in the near future.

The winners of our yearly The Hague Innovators challenge are announced! These three startups are shaking up their industry:
1. #WECO
2. #Beesage
3. #Reprex
Congratulations to all of them! 🎉#doinggoodanddoingbusiness #TheHagueInnovators pic.twitter.com/GnRdjRrL5P
— ImpactCity (@impactcity) November 15, 2022

Art+Tech

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 08:12:00 +0200

We will connect to several innovation topics in music by providing research, data, and evidence. Building on the work of the Blockchain & Society research project of our Consortium member, the Institute for Information Law IViR at the University of Amsterdam, we will address issues related to NFT and blockchain technologies in music.
Connecting to the work of various music stakeholders in Finland, we will experiment with the safe data sharing of confidential data, avoiding the extreme pitfalls of ‘radical openness’ and ‘closed data’. With the University of Bologna, and eight years of experience in sensitive data sharing with the Digital Music Observatory (formerly: CEEMID), we will create various statistical methods to create anonymized and synthetic datasets that do not endanger business or private data.
We are going to design indicators and carry out a landscape mapping with Music Tech Europe, a new organization that aims to become the representative of music startups and music ecosystems in the European Union.


Topic	Description
pillar	problem	availability	feasibility
Pillar 4	Several reports cover the evolution of music and tec	Available	Music Ally, Midia Research…
Pillar 4	Blockchain and music	Data gap	No authoritative assessment of the impact of Blockchain on the music sector and of the EU-powered initiatives linking Blockchain and music.
Pillar 4	Artificial intelligence, machine learning and music	Data gap	No authoritative assessment of the impact of AI and machine learning on the music sector and of the EUpowered initiatives linking AI and music.
Pillar 4	Future of streaming	Data gap	No authoritative assessment of the future development of streaming and its impact on the EU music sector
Pillar 4	Digital revenues in the music sector and the relevant business models	Data gap	In the UK the report ‘Dissecting the digital dollar’ commission by the MMF to CMU, but no similar European study.
Pillar 4	Mapping the flow of digital revenues in the music sector and the relevant business models in Europe	Data gap	Digital distribution of music has introduced new complex business models that are not always transparent.
Pillar 4	Music start-ups in the EU	Data gap	No authoritative mapping of start-ups involved in music at EU level.
Pillar 4	The impact of artists’ ‘do it yourself’ culture on the economy of the sector	Data gap	Although more artists are going to market with their music without the traditional support of labels, there is no overview of how deep the trend is, how it affects the music ecosystem or what policy frameworks can or should support such activity.
Pillar 4	Funding mechanisms for music	Data gap	No regular overview of the funding schemes in Europe relevant to the music business.

Pan-European Creator Survey

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 14:00:00 +0100

Engage with us on LinkedIn @CultDataObs or check out our open data and open repositories, code, tutorials

The Cultural Creative Sectors Industries CCSI Data Observatory has grew out of the Digital Music Observatory, which had harmonized and collected surveys in all European countries about how musicians work and earn their living, and how audiences differ in various countries, metropolitan regions in terms of typical age, visiting probability, spending capacity, and other important factors. We helped music organizations to significantly increase the royalty pay-outs of artists in two countries, and we contributed for the advocacy of fairer compensation and fairer taxation in others.

This year we teamed up with the reCreating Europe research consortium of renowned experts in the field of copyright, geography and economics of creativity, sociology of innovation, communication and media studies, cultural policies, Open Knowledge and access to culture, cultural policies, minority rights and disability rights. We are carrying out a truly pan-European survey in all EU languages about important topics for creators and performers, including but not limited to musicians, songwriters, composers, photographers, video artists, designers, actors, illustrators, authors, directors, journalists and screenwriters:

Understanding how much creators are aware of the legal and financial terms that online platforms use that distribute their work
Understanding and interest in how AI algorithms contribute to the successful or not successful dissemination of their work, or can support their creative processes
Understanding and evaluation of fairness in the way internet platforms distribute earnings to creators
Attitudes to plagiarism, piracy, and copyright protection
Access to Covid-19 relief funds
No personal data is involved.

What do we ask from individual creators, bands, collectives?

The researchers of the reCreating Europe Consortium would like to carry out an interview with you in English.
If you cannot or do not want to be interviewed in English, we would be grateful if you would still fill out the survey form (about 10 minutes) in any of the EU official languages,
And invite a colleague/friend confident in English to do the same and volunteer for the interview at the end of the survey.

Creator organizations

We would like to ask you to ask your members to do the same above, in your newsletter, Facebook page, or other means of communication. The research with free datasets, visualizations, infographics will be placed for free in the Digital Music Observatory and the Cultural and Creative Sectors Industries Data Observatory and can help your own HR, advocacy, education work. (We have many other similar data assets that are already there, or we can give to you.) Therefore, it is fully compliant with GDPR—we do not want to know who fills out our survey, the interviews are voluntary, and sharing the survey can contribute to your core business.

Bloggers

We would be very happy if you would write about this survey or invite creators to participate in our research. We can give you infographics, data visualizations prior to academic publication to write about the results.

In our Central & Eastern European Music Industry Report 2020 as a case-study on evidence-based policymaking we compared how musicians and their audiences live in several countries.

Our research principles

We believe in transparency, openness, and high-quality work. We carry out an open collaboration with representatives of music professionals, NGOs, and universities. Because in the European music ecosystem, most professional and artists are freelancers or micro-entrepreneurs, we also try to form collaborations with individuals. All our data is open, interoperable, reusable data that comes with the highest quality of documentation and help for reuse.

We would appreciate it immensely if you would support this important research by disseminating the call to participate in this study.

History

Before you start a new questionnaire-based research, get in touch with us! Maybe we have history for your questionnaires. We can make your survey cheaper, better, and more informative.

The Digital Music Observatory and its predecessor, CEEMID, has been working with harmonized surveys for 8 years. We have compiled the biggest database of interview transcripts with concert audiences (more than 70,000 interviews in all European countries, soon to be extended to more than 100k) and the world’s biggest harmonized survey dataset about music creators (4000 responses from 12 European countries.) We use the Open Data Directive, originally for government-funded research data, recently extended to taxpayer funded scientific research, to access datasets that are invisible for the music industry.

We using survey harmonization and data integration techniques to join hundreds of questionnaire-based research in Europe on music audiences. We are now improving our capacities to bring analysis to sub-national level, like in the example of Wales.

Feasibility Study On Promoting Slovak Music In Slovakia & Abroad

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Download the study in Slovak or in English.

In 2015, realizing the low visibility and income-generating potential of Slovak music, the legislation introduced an amendment to the broadcasting act to regulate local content in radiostreams. The Slovak content promoting policy was well-intended but not based on any impact assessment, and it reached its goal only partially.

The Slovak broadcasting quotas in comparison with other national quotas a very simple, and they are impossible to measure, which makes both compliance and enforcement very difficult. Radio editors do not get any help to find music that fits into the playlists and fulfill the quota obligations – in many cases, it is impossible for them to find out if a song actually meets the quota requirements. For the same reason, neither is enforcement possible.

Another deficiency of the broadcasting quotas is that because of its fuzzy target, it is not clear whom it tries to help, and it has few friends. It is unclear how performers, composers or Slovak music producers can benefit from the system. Furthermore, it only helps a few genres, and it decreases the chances of other Slovak music in instrumental and non-Slovak language genres (for example, classical, jazz, rock) to be heard.

What should a good local content policy (radio quota, recommendation system, streaming quota) achieve?

And at last, radio is losing its importance in music discovery. New generation find the music during their music discovery age on YouTube and digital streaming platforms. A Slovak content promoting policy that does not work on digital streaming platforms will be obsolete when radio content providers will switch to digital streaming in the foreseeable future.

Our Feasibility Study follows the following logic: In the first chapter we introduce various music recommendation systems in the context of local content promotion polices, like local mandatory content quota regulations.

We aimed to create a demo version of a utility-based, transparent, accountable recommendation system.

In the second chapter, we consider the market-based or creative industry economy supporting policy goals, measurements, and potential support given to artists and producers.

We then turn in the third chapter to content-based local regulations promoting the use of the Slovak language or Slovak music content, irrespective of the performers and producers nationality, residence or ethnicity.

We introduce the idea of the Slovak Music Database, a comprehensive, mainly opt-in, opt-out database that of Slovak artists and Slovak music that should be supported by the local content regulation and other policies. We also create a Demo Slovak Music Database to understand the problem and scope of the creation of the comprehensive version.

The project website contains the Demo Slovak Music Database.

We also created a Demo Recommendation System which is currently not online. We explain here why.

Screenshot of the first verison of the demo app.

Research questions

Why are the total market shares of Slovak music relatively low both on the domestic and the foreign markets?
How can we measure the market share of the Slovak music in the domestic and foreign markets?
How can we measure the value gap between what some media platforms, most particularly the biggest YouTube, does not pay out to the Slovak stakeholders within Slovakia?
What is the interplay of the various definitions on market share and national quota targets?
How ‘shadow-markets’ of home copying and unlicensed media platforms, such as YouTube impact market shares directly and national quotas indirectly?
How can modern data science, predictive microeconomics and statistics help increase the market share of Slovak music in Slovakia and abroad?

We would like to continue this work in more depth in Slovakia, and include new countries and regions, for example, Estonia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Flanders and Wales in the next versions. We are also planning city-version.

Thanks for the entire Reprex team who contributed to the English version:

Budai, Sándor, programming and deployment
Dr. Emily H. Clarke, musicologist
Stef Koenis, musicologist, musician
Dr. Andrés Garcia Molina, data scientist, musicologist, editor
Kátya Nagy, music journalist, research assistant;

and the Slovak version:

Dáša Bulíková, musician, translator
Dominika Semaňáková, musicologist, editor, layout.

Special thanks to Tammy Nižňanska.

Project Website, Demo App

Listen Local is an open initiative for musicians and music organizations to create new, open AI applications that make locally relevant music visible online and offline. Listen Slovak is our first demonstration project, accompanied with a Feasibility Study. It was created jointly with the Slovak Performing Rights Society, and with the support of the Slovak Arts Council and Consolidated Independent, a music distributor company for independent labels and artist. Our aim was to understand why some Slovak music cannot be heard on radio and on streaming platforms, and to create a database and a demo application that makes that music discoverable.