Fair Music® Project: Towards a more equitable music ecosystem

TLDR

The Fair Music Project, initiated by the International Music Council, with New Internet Media and SKAP, aims to address the disparities in the music streaming system, especially for emerging artists.
The project is propelled by the NIM technical platform, which is central to ensuring fair compensation for every stream — an approach currently misunderstood as universal. The upcoming months will feature stakeholder consultations to shape this innovative platform, focusing on fair pay models and enhanced features like discoverability and audio quality. A beta will be tested before the final rollout. The project encompasses capacity-building for artists, legal analysis, and advocacy for equitable practices in music streaming, mirroring the IMC’s commitment to the Five Music Rights and supported by the EU’s Creative Europe Programme.

Public PR

The International Music Council (IMC) and its partners, New Internet Media and SKAP — Swedish Society of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors, officially launched the Fair Music Project.

The functioning of music streaming needs to be reimagined, and this has been known, at least for those navigating the ecosystem, for more than a decade. Still, despite many initiatives, technologies, protests, and reports from civil society organizations and government bodies, being visible and making even the smallest amount of money on the most common streaming platforms remains quite challenging, especially for emerging artists.

Therefore, the need for a common solution is more urgent than ever.

The Fair Music Project results from many years of discussions and work with music creators, focusing on their right to compensation and recognition. Through a series of targeted actions, it aims to offer a concrete and improved compensation model compared to the systems that currently dominate the market. Unlike recent developments, where services have chosen to completely remove compensation for those who do not reach a certain number of plays, the Fair Music Project will instead ensure compensation for every listening through the technology to be developed by New Internet Media.

This is an approach that most consumers already believe is standard but far from the truth.

To kickstart the process, a series of consultations, coordinated by SKAP, with all relevant stakeholders will be organized in the next months with the aim of collecting feedback from all those who are part of the value chain, starting with the creators themselves. Stakeholders will be invited to imagine the platform of their dreams, considering remuneration models but also the discoverability algorithms, fake streams, the quality of audio files, and the governance of such platforms, among other aspects.

After this first step, a beta version of the platform will be developed and released for testing purposes.

In parallel to the technical development, the project also includes a series of actions to build the capacities of music creators to navigate the streaming business, a legal study on the pitfalls related to the new technology as well as advocacy actions at the EU and international level around the importance of fair practices in music services in both the public and political spheres.

Finally, the Fair Music streaming platform will be launched to prove that a different streaming model, co-developed with all relevant stakeholders, is not only possible but also financially viable.

With this project, IMC continues its engagement towards a more equitable music ecosystem strongly anchored in the organisation’s values: the Five Music Rights.

The Fair Music Project is Co-Funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

More info www.fairmusic.io

Contact: Davide Grosso, IMC Director of Programmes & Partnerships, d.grosso[at]imc-cim.org