Chapter 2 Music Diversity & Circulation

Music diversity and circulation is a crucial policy and business goal for European music stakeholders. Most European creators work in small countries, often confined to the audiences of a not widely spoken language; moreover, they are in competition with the entire world via media platforms, streaming services and traditional record sales.

To get some initial ideas, please consult the Music Export and Music Import chapter of our Central European Music Industry Report.

2.1 Cross-border circulation of works

We started developing indicators for our Central European Music Industry Report, but we would like to make our indicators pan-European and relevant. We are inviting our initial partners to formulate their expectations to us and to let us come up with statistically valid indicators that can be used as KPIs in business or policy indicators as well as ex ante or ex post grant evaluation indicators.

2.2 Domestic market share

2.2.1 Domestic market share - Spotify

The following chart depicts the market share sound recordings based on production (not the artist’s nationality) on the national Spotify charts in select countries starting from from the summer of 2019.

You can download the entire dataset here:

2.3 Cross-border mobility of artists

Our music professional surveys have been monitoring cross-border mobility from 2014 with an increasing geographical scope. In 2020, we would like to carry out this survey for most of Europe, but in an extreme year, when cross-border activity is practically limited to zero due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are inviting our partners to use this opportunity to re-think the appropriate measures of cross-border artist mobility.

2.4 Diversity of use

Diversity of use can be shown easily in the context of music imports and exports, but it is a far broader category. Music is a very diverse form of art, and there is no widely accepted typology for its different forms.

We are experimenting with various forms of quantitative data, partly derived from audience surveys, partly from streaming use data, and partly from royalty statements. We have started a pilot project where we will include musicologists and other stakeholders to be more specific about what we should measure. This is an open call, too, for our partners, about what sort of KPIs, policy indicators or grant indicators they would like to see here.