A Green Paper on AI, Data Governance, and Metadata Policies for Europe's Music Ecosystem

This document (version 0.8) is an early-stage Green Paper on AI, Data Governance, and Metadata Policies for Europe’s Music Ecosystem: Practical Steps Towards a Decentralised and Open European Music Observatory. 

It is released for consultation and should not be considered a final work. It has been internally reviewed. Any comments are welcome for improvements in problem statements, omissions, recommendations. 

Prepared in line with Horizon Europe’s transparency rules and the Open Policy Analysis (OPA) framework, it is released early to enable consultation, incorporate stakeholder input, and ensure an auditable drafting process. All related deliverables, figures, datasets, and bibliographies are openly available via GitHub and Zenodo to support transparency and reuse.

The Green Paper addresses three key reform layers:

• Fixing music data at the source (reducing redundancy, improving interoperability, reconciling attribution and privacy).

• Building a federated Open Music Observatory (as a European data-sharing space aligned with EIF, FAIR, EOSC, and ECCCH).

• Aligning AI with governance and value creation (supporting curative AI, shared utilities, and trustworthy frameworks that help small actors as well as large platforms).

It serves as the basis for Deliverable D5.7 (Policy Brief) of the Open Music Europe consortium and will inform a subsequent White Paper to be discussed at LineCheck 2025 and the final policy forum in Brussels (December 2025).

Transparency note: Always cite the latest versioned DOI available on Zenodo. Supporting documents and figures are accessible via our GitHub repository.

Funding acknowledgement: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme under Grant Agreement No. 101095295. The views expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission or its agencies.