Adjusting the Music Compass

Unabashedly hijacking the latest EU policy making metaphorium to reflect on music policy making in the coming months as the EU’s Culture Compass will be shaped.

The thoughts in this piece are work in progress, but spurred to be published by these events:

• February 4th, Culture: the Compass for Europe’s Future | Cultural Deal for Europe Annual Policy Conversation organised by Culture Action Europe, Europa Nostra, and European Cultural Foundation (watch the recording). It culminated with the presence of Glenn Micallef the new European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, reflecting and answering questions about the Culture Compass.

• February 5th, the European Music Council convened a round table discussion in Brussels with music sector stakeholders and the representatives from the European Commission to discuss what does all this mean for the music people, how we should engage with the process, and how to proceed in practice.

Such events are always packed with people and programme and mostly have little time for extended discussions on anything. What follows is basically a collection of lightly organised reflections on how we could make use of the ecosystem concept to bring nuance and coherence into describing how music works. This could become a useful explanatory framework for music policy making. It’s timely as we should make efforts to provide substance to how the music sector needs and opportunities relate to the Culture Compass.

1. Context – a special moment in the EU cultural policy making

Culture Compass – an EU cultural policy?

For those not following EU policy making more closely: while culture is first and foremost the policy making domain where the Member States take the lead and the EU’s role being merely supportive, there has been some EU funding for culture – most notably through the Creative Europe programme. In addition, specifically for music, there has been the Music Moves Europe initiative that has funded some additional studies and pilot actions.

The new EU Commission has announced that there will be a new strategic framework for culture – the Culture Compass. It’s one of the several compasses planned, the Competitiveness Compass was already published a few days ago. The Culture Compass will not be an EU cultural policy per se, as the EU does not have the competency granted by the Member States, but – as I guess the culture stakeholders are hoping for – it’s as close as it can get to one. The European Commission will organise consultations with the “sector” over the next months and the structural beams of this strategic edifice will need to be in place by summer when the broader discussions of the Multiannual Financial Framework, the 7-year EU budget for the next period of 2028-2034, will begin.

One reason for concern in the culture crowd is that among the everpresent keyword cloud causing perennially foggy conditions around all EU policy making, one is looming large – competitiveness. Will it mean a return to narrowly defined economic impact as a measure for everything?

Also, there have been rumours of a major overhaul of the entire programme structure and therefore Creative Europe might disappear entirely. This makes the culture people very anxious and even the ministers of culture of the 27 Member States wrote an open letter to call for continuing the programme. I suggest reading the latest newsletter by Culture Policy Room and following them in general for updates and informed commentary.

A Music Compass?

The Culture Compass will be broad, outlining high level themes, such as the working conditions of artists, AI impact on cultural sectors, access to culture, and so on. It will not outline any sector specific plans. But of course we need to already think about how the Compass will relate to the specific needs and opportunities of the music sector. Just to clear up the wordplay: there is no plan for a Music Compass (officially). It’s just a short phrase I somewhat opportunistically use for the work that the music people engaged in the EU policy making, together or separately, in coordination or chaotically, need to do over the next months to make sense of these developments.

Though there is no single EU level music strategy, we are not starting from scratch. There are several high level frameworks and processes ongoing that can be built upon. Five years ago the European Music Council launched the European Agenda for Music, aiming to establish an ongoing dialogue between policy makers and music sector stakeholders. In 2021, the Centre national de la musique in France launched the One Voice for European Music, an initiative that seeks to bring music as a focus into the travelling Council Presidency programmes, currently chaired by Poland. The decade-old Music Moves Europe initiative has funded, among other things, the ongoing structured dialogue process led by the new Federation of Music Conferences. As part of that dialogue, a “conceptual framework definition of the European music ecosystem” was recently published. There are three Horizon projects looking at aspects of music ecosystems (Open Music Europe, Fair MusE and Music360). And last, but not least, the MME also funded a study on the European Music Export Strategy, something I have been working on ever since with EMEE (see this report for a latest description).

For all these initiatives, are we, then, any closer to a coherent set of goals and actionable approaches to move towards them? It seems fair to say, not close enough.

2. Informing music policy making through an ecosystem lens

Why does music need a(ny) policy?

Policy making, in the classical definition by Thomas Dye, is anything the government chooses to do or not to do. There is no inherent reason any government should make policy for, say, music. Somebody has to first define the “sector” in some particular configuration, and then describe the specific needs of that sector that require policy intervention to be met. Such acts of description are always political in themselves, rely on particular ideas and values, and naturally cause ongoing debates. In democratic societies these processes are more or less publicly negotiated and include various civil society actors, such as unions, trade associations and various other entities that represent some particular view or expertise.

When it comes to music, or more broadly arts, or even more broadly cultural policy in Europe, we have various conceptual justifications, some of them with considerable historical legacies, for policy intervention. Safeguarding national cultural heritage, developing national cultural identity, cultivating excellence in select art forms and democratising access to them, enabling cultural democracy, or using culture in the service of social development or economic gain – take your pick. Remnants of these exist as layers on top of each other in confidently eloquent, though often inconsistent, preambles of cultural policy agendas.

In music, specifically, we have a legacy of severely reductionist binaries, such as arts vs commercial entertainment, serious and light music, and “classical” and “popular” music. Evoking these simplistic juxtapositions will make any music sociologist sigh with fatigue, but they are very much alive in practical music policy making or often preempting real debates. Each of these logics have their own set of values and an idea of a desired future, providing grounds for definitions of the needs of the music sector.

In addition to the various rationales for policy intervention in general, there is a host of issues raised in the music policy discussions, such as:

• diversity of artistic expression;

• access to both practicing and enjoying music in its diverse forms, including a focus on education, equality, and inclusion;

• the possibility to make a career in music as a professional, including a reasonable opportunity to earn a living and considerations about the problems around markets not working well for everyone;

• creating the conditions for artistic excellence in music, including the space and means to take risks and innovate;

• ensuring robust market conditions for entrepreneurial initiative in music, including issues of competition and dominance.

This could go on, but it’s enough to make the point – there are many concerns and a lot of hope is placed on policy makers to help resolve some of these issues.

Understanding and articulating any set of needs for the music sector requires two inputs: a vision of the desired future – this is shaped by the underlying values of those doing the articulating. And a usable explanation of what to change in what way in order to achieve the desired effect, or what I call a “theory of change”. While there is no lack of aspirational visions for a fairer and more prosperous music life for all, the theory of change is often woefully lacking. We can dress it up with eloquent, often overblown rhetoric of values or impressive looking “impact” studies, but peeling all that away we’re often left with an ask for more money to carry on doing our thing.

Music as an ecosystem – a promising theoretical lens

“Ecosystem” is a metaphor currently in vogue. It’s largely used interchangeably with “sector”, but I think there is potentially more depth behind the ecosystem concept we could make use of to come up with better, more nuanced descriptions and analyses of how music works.

Bringing systems thinking or concepts of ecology to bear on the cultural sector(s) is not new (see this recent literature review by Jenni Pekkarinen), but it now seems to have penetrated deeper into the European cultural policy discourse than before.

To clarify a typical misunderstanding, I’m not advocating for an exclusive definition claiming that music somehow IS an ecosystem. Rather, by viewing the music sector through the conceptual lens of the systems theory, as an open complex adaptive system, we might gain insights that help us develop a more nuanced understanding of it. One of the key characteristics of open systems is that there are many actors interacting with each other in highly diverse ways. Such a system is self-organising, meaning there is no single point of control. This also means, however, that open systems are difficult to fully describe, have delayed effects and surprising outcomes.

The attraction of using the ecosystem as a metaphor to describe human society should be clear enough: we, too, are willful agents with dreams and designs of our own, difficult to predict and govern. An analytical use of the ecosystem lens might be useful to better capture the complex motivations and ways of working of the myriad actors as diverse as artists, creators, freelance professionals and entrepreneurs, small or major companies, non-profit organisations and so on. I don’t think we have the conceptual tools yet to do this, but some work is being done already.

Another feature of the systems theory is that all systems have leverage points, points of intervention with high impact-for-effort ratio. Identifying such leverage points could be used for effective policy design.

Instead of arguing whether music is first and foremost an art form, a product, a way of life or a business sector, we could try to better capture the complex whole and link the different parts to each other. An insightful approach can be found from the Foundational Economy Collective proposing a…

“... zonal understanding of co-existing economies, borrowed from the French historian Fernand Braudel. It argues against the idea of a unitary economy where all activity is or should be subject to one logic and set of principles, Instead, “the economy” is divided into zones, each one with different principles, ways of working and objectives”. (What is the foundational economy?)

Justin O’Connor in his most recent book “Culture is not an industry summarises it as follows:

“There is not one economy, but multiple economic zones, which operate on different principles, have different structures and dynamics, and which should be valued in different ways. They outline a core household community economy (mostly untraded); a foundational (“material and providential”) economy; an “overlooked” economy [...]; and the “tradable competitive” economy” (O’Connor, 2024, 148).

It’s fairly clear in music. Understanding the complex motivations and logics of operation behind a small music venue and Live Nation, a community cinema and Netflix, formal and informal music education and running a national opera house require more nuances and contextual understanding. They won’t make sense under any single-focus explanation nor model. Intuitively we understand them to be connected, but so far lack good theories to explain this holistically. The ecosystem concept might have that potential. While it’s just an analytical frame for looking at and making sense of what's there and doesn’t tell us what should be there (vision) or what to do (policy), it can inform both.

We need this to argue why a thriving culturally diverse undergrowth – valuable in its own right – is also useful for the layers of a more commercial “tradable economy”. Also, how the cultural diversity dividend of the private music economy sphere, from the very independent artists to smaller and bigger companies, often dismissed wholesale as the commercial “popular” music sector, is at least as important as the economic one.

Finally, the systems approach could give substance to the notion of competitiveness – economic, but also beyond – and how it’s linked to a vibrant creative life of the music sector on all levels. I admit, it’s very aspirational and needs to be shown to work in practice, but I believe it can be at least an interesting avenue to go down.

3. Next steps

In any attempt to agree on a common music policy on the European level there will be many music actors involved, each with somewhat different values and concerns and therefore varying interests towards the goals for policy making. We are, therefore, faced with a daunting task of negotiating some common threads and come to broader consensus. I’ve written before about some of the problems and pitfalls we are facing as representative organisations and I don’t think these can be overcome in the coming months. Regardless, we should make an effort to adjust our Music Compass before it’s adjusted for us. If we miss this window without even trying, we don’t really deserve the chance to complain the next 5-10 years about what should’ve been.

A few brief thoughts on how to proceed:

• We need round table discussions with many stakeholders present, but we also need focused single-issue working groups that delve deeper, do background research and develop coherent well-argued positions and proposals. The danger with large meetings is to fall into the habit of raising every possible issue that merits further discussion and then not having any time left to actually discuss any of them.

• We need much more writing and sharing of drafty position papers that can engage many stakeholders that would otherwise be excluded. The European Commission will organise a call for evidence where everyone can submit their input. We’d be smart to work out stronger and more developed position papers with broader backing among stakeholders.

• Between now and the summer, there are at least 10-15 music conferences happening. There could be discussion groups and panels drawing from the work already being done, not another ad hoc lineup who raises a number of issues, but has no time or context to take the discussion further.

Yes, coordination is needed and this could be provided by some of the umbrella organisations or consortia of them, but a lot of the initiative needs to come from the wider community as there is no time to wait. I will continue working on developing the ecosystem approach with various colleagues and hope to share some bits and pieces in future writing also here.