Open Music Observatory — Version 1.44

Our ambition in developing the  Open Music Observatory is to provide both the technological foundation and a practical roadmap for creating a European Music Observatory through a bottom-up, decentralised approach. Instead of waiting for a central agreement on what such an observatory should collect or how it should be governed, we propose a pragmatic model: any data owner or institution that meets shared quality, provenance, and cooperation rules may contribute to the Observatory. Once the system reaches sufficient maturity for European-scale use, its long-term institutional form can be decided.

The creation of the `Open Music Observatory`  was a cornerstone activity of the Open Music Europe (OpenMusE) Horizon Europe project. This work continued until the end of the project (31 December 2025) and focuses on the collection, processing, and dissemination of new datasets, as well as the development of innovative data services aligned with the project’s exploitation pathways. This report accompanies the ongoing creation of the Open Music Observatory as a digital infrastructure on the World Wide Web.

At present, the Observatory consists of four federated data modules:

• the Slovak Comprehensive Music Database,
• the Hungarian Music Database (GitHub) and the related Zenodo item.
• the Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space,
• and the Open Music Europe Core Module accessed via the https://openmusicobservatory.eu/

Together, these modules demonstrate how a decentralised and interoperable European music data ecosystem can function in practice.

The Open Music Observatory operates as a digital service provider for the music sector, following the principles of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and adopting a governance model suited to the distributed and cross-domain nature of music data. Its architecture and workflows build on established European practices while introducing methods for semantic interoperability, federated governance, and reproducible policy evidence.

For the broader policy alignment of this infrastructure, see:

A Green Paper on AI, Data Governance, and Metadata Policies for Europe’s Music Ecosystem: Practical Steps Towards a Decentralised and Open European Music Observatory (available on Zenodo). The Green Paper explains how the Observatory aligns with European policy initiatives, including the Culture Compass for Europe, emerging European cultural data spaces, and the recommendations of the Copyright Infrastructure Task Force (CITF) concerning trustworthy and interoperable copyright data infrastructures.

Version 1.44 updates the documentation and policy alignment of the Observatory architecture with the Green Paper (Zenodo link) and explains alignment with EU policies and the recomendations of the first CITF report.  Version 1.43 introduced revisions to the data model annex.

Updates on datasets, services, and features are regularly reported on the Open Music blog.