Blog | Open Music Europe

Commitment to the Open Policy Analysis Guidelines

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:00:00 +0100

The Open Music Europe consortium is committed to implementing the highest standard Open Policy Analysis Guidelines and showing best practices to the FAIR principles using reproducible research principles. We believe that this will increase the quality and usability of our products to our target groups: European cultural policymakers, the music industry and its trade associations, researchers of music. In this blogpost we explain how we started to work and explain the next steps.

OPA? FAIR?

The Open Policy Analysis¹ is an approach to policy analysis wherein data, code, materials, and clear accounts of methodological decisions are made freely available to facilitate collaboration, discussion, and reuse. This helps a transparent policy analysis that is always inclusive to comments, and which is easy to review. We believe that this will lead to higher quality and more transparency in the use of resources. You can read in details how the Open Music Europe consortium applies the OPA Guidelines to deliver its results in the Resources/OPA section of our project website.

The GO FAIR initiative of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)² is mandatory to apply to the Horizon Europe program. It aims to make the data and services rendered by the Open Music Europe consortium to its target groups Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) for machines. Compliance with this European aim requires the application of OPA on Level 3, which ensures reproduciblity and readability for machines.

In practice

Our Consortium, following best practice, placed its assumptions (which were part of our Proposal for this project) into the open science repository of the European OpenAIRE project³.

The Open Music Europe Consortium, EUBA, SOZA and Reprex signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic on utilizing the Open Policy Analysis results.

From left to right: Ľubomír Burgr, Chariman of the Board (SOZA); Dr James Edwards Open Music Europe program director; Ferdinand Daňo, rector of EUBA; Rado Kutaš, state secretary; Tomaš Mikš, SOZA; Daniel Antal, co-founder of Reprex. Photo: Dominika Semaňáková.

Following the requirements of Open Analysis, the Coordinator of Open Music Europe pledged that our researchers in WP1-2-3-4 will apply the OPA in their analysis.

Open Analysis

Provide clear accounts of all methodological procedures in a way that is easily interpreted by an informed reader: Code is clearly documented into a dynamic document, or open notebook. No spreadsheets–see further compliance in Open Materials. Synyo is tasked to make document templates and web content that help compliance with this principle, and Reprex and Turku assist all work package leaders with various tools to comply in content with this requirement.
Share raw (or analytic) data and materials in a way that the analysis is reproducible with minimal effort.

The report utilizes the indicators developed in Open Music Europe D1.1 Economy of music in Europe: Methods and indicators. See the Resources part of the website for the further repositories of the Work Packages.

Share raw (or analytic) data and materials in a way that the analysis is reproducible with minimal effort. Analytic and raw data are made available through a trusted repository. D1.3 Report on the European Music Economy.

Open Materials

All research and innovation team members use version control software and track changes in a shared project repository. All our deliverable are delivered in a version-controlled repository.

For example, the D1.1 deliverable materials can be found in this repository. See the Resources part of the website for the further repositories of the Work Packages. This will be used for example to monitor the implementation of the Cultural and Creative Industries Strategy of the Slovak Republic 2030 Stratégia kultúry a kreatívneho priemyslu Slovenskej republiky 2030 national policy.

All project components (for each deliverable output) are organized in a selfcontained folder using a Standard File Structure (SFS), and a readme file is included⁴.

The Work Package leaders ensure that the list all inputs, and their sources, and provide links or detailed references.

The report utilizes the indicators developed in Open Music Europe D1.1 that you can find here: Economy of music in Europe: Methods and indicators. The report itself can be found in this repository: Report on the European Music Economy

Code must be easily readable and possible to run with just one click, and produces tabular data or results⁵. The Turku Data Science team and Reprex will assist all our research teams in making their data outputs reproducible, particularly with the development of the dataset package that will ensure that our tabular data outputs will not only be readable by spreadsheet applications but also for machines, i.e. following the standards of the Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange and the W3C Consortium definition of machine-readable output.

Open Output

Our aim is to be open, transparent and inclusive from the planning of a policy analysis till we are finished. Our open output techniques ensure that our analysis can be easily found in global libraries, and it is connected to similar work. Read more in our Contributors’ Manual for the Data Observatories and Open Collection about how we make the output more findable, accessible, easier to integrate with other digital assets, i.e., more interoperable and more reusable.

Link:

Contributors’ Manual for the Data Observatories and Open Collections

You can download the nine requirements in a tabular form on the www.bitss.org website. ↩︎
GO FAIR website ↩︎
Report on the European Music Economy GO FAIR website ↩︎
Links to the README.md files for D1.1 Economy of music in Europe: Methods and indicators; D1.3 Economy of music in Europe: Methods and indicators. ↩︎
For stand-alone spreadsheets, this level of compliance is not applicable, we will always deliver spreadsheets with the code that created the spreadsheet. See Resources/OPA ↩︎

Cooperation with the Slovak Ministry of Culture and Other Slovak Partners

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 12:00:00 +0100

The Open Music Europe Consortium, Reprex and SOZA signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, the Economic University of Bratislava, SOZA on utilizing the Open Policy Analysis results.

This cooperation is a very important milestone for our the Digital Music Observatory: our reproducible research will be used in an official national policy context in an EU member state. Our Slovak Music Industry Report has set a best practice within the Slovak Republic.

We will create Live Policy Document on Music Economy, on Diversity and Circulation,on Music and Society, and on Music Innovation in a national policy context. We will contribute with automatically refreshed web resources and high-quality indicators about cultural and creative industries, particularly music. Our work will be used to monitor the implementation of the Cultural and Creative Industries Strategy of the Slovak Republic 2030 Stratégia kultúry a kreatívneho priemyslu Slovenskej republiky 2030 national policy.

EUBA and the Open Music Europe consortium will develop an indicator monitoring system. Reprex’s Smart Policy Documents technology will be used to keep it on a web resource dashboard. See Central Register of Contracts (in Slovak).

This will be the first high-profile national policy use of our Digital Music Observatory. Over the course of three years, in cooperation with our Slovak partners, we would like to persuade more and more national policymakers and also regional actors (like the city of Trenčín, the cultural capital of Europe in 2026) to use this collaborative open knowledge platform as a prototype of a European Music Observatory.

'Being able to spread your music is one of the greatest things about being a musician'

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Innerglow. Photo by Denis Stoyanov.

The Listen Local interview series is an ongoing, structured, artist/creator interview series about how music, musicians, and audience move across locations. They are important inputs to our work to fill data gaps and support the Diversity and Circulation of European music within the WP2 of Open Music Europe. See the Listen Local Bulgaria website for more details.

What is the band setup and how did you come up with this name?

My name is Todor Kovachev and I’m the singer and a keyboardist of Innerglow. We are a trio, also consisting of a guitarist and a drummer. All of us play various instruments and do arrangements and songs, so we’re multi-functional. We play original music, which might be obvious to many, but in Bulgaria, there are still a lot of cover bands.

It wasn’t easy to pick a band name. We wanted the name to be short and it turned out that Innerglow was available, so we decided that it doesn’t only fit our music but it also can inspire us in the future. The name includes a lot, while being short. I think now we like it even more than we did in the beginning, we find more meaning in it.

And who are your band members?

Peter Zhelev is our guitar player and Matey Hristoskov is our drummer. First, we also had a bassist, but we had to remain a trio. Since then, we use backing tracks for our bass and the three of us play live. It was a necessary solution, although we do miss having a live bass. However, having three people has a lot of advantages. Sometimes it’s easier and faster to work with fewer people, and the three of us now are 100% involved and passionate about this band, which is more important than having more members.

I’ve noticed that you mostly sing in English, is that a conscious choice for your lyrics?

Yes, all of our songs are in English except for the latest one, which we released 1-2 months ago. It’s in Bulgarian, which is a bit of a shock and definitely a huge step for us. The rest of our music is in English, as it always felt natural for our style and for me as a singer, to sing and write in English. It was much more challenging to write a song in our own language, even though it’s a bit of a paradox.

We always tried to reach foreign audiences as well as Bulgarian. We weren’t sure how it would sound in Bulgarian, but I think we did a good job because people were surprised by the appearance of the second language in our music. Some even said that it sounds better in Bulgarian, which I personally don’t believe. I’m still very used to singing in English and I’m a better singer in English. But we might do more Bulgarian songs! We even like to joke that we may include a third language in the long run, who knows? The guitarist knows French, I know a little bit of Spanish… Everything is possible and we’re trying to keep an open mind.

Where did you start your band?

We’re in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital. We all have experience with different kinds of bands in the Bulgarian scene, mostly rock and classic rock bands. I think that’s exactly what united us – we were a bit tired of this classic rock vibe. We wanted to make something different and experiment with electronic music, with things that could let us get away from the classic rock sound. We have since developed our own approach and sound, we listen to a lot of electronic music and loads of different styles are incorporated into what we now call Innerglow. I think people appreciate hearing something else, a mix of influences.

And when did you start as a band?

In 2016. 2017 was the year when we released our first song. It gradually evolved from there. We started playing concerts and performing at festivals in Bulgaria, and by now we’ve already played in the biggest venues here. Of course, the scene is not big, so reaching these venues is not a huge achievement, but we’ve improved a lot since our modest beginnings. We’re still very productive, we do a lot of songs. I think this is the most important thing because loads of bands in Bulgaria have problems with productivity and releasing new material frequently enough. This is difficult because of having to combine music with a day-job. It’s a huge problem when you’re a band that wants to make a name for yourself if you don’t release music often enough.

Where do you think your fans are from, mostly?

Looking at the Spotify statistics, most of your listeners are from Bulgaria and most others are from big countries such as the UK or Germany. But we also receive great feedback from Morocco, from Indonesia. That’s when you realise that your music reaches people and destinations that you can never be aware of, and that’s the point, of course, to reach people who actually connect to what you do. Being able to spread your music is one of the greatest things about being a musician.

Check out Innerglow: Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram

Are you actively trying to find new audiences?

We are, but we’re not very good at this. None of us is a natural at social media, posting pictures and all that. We’re better at creating the music and letting it speak for itself, but we all know that’s not enough nowadays. That’s why we’re actively working on posting more.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sofar Sounds Sofia (@sofarsoundssofia)

Would you say that you’re part of a musical scene?

There is a lot of new music and bands in Bulgaria, an alternative scene. However, I wouldn’t say that there’s a band that’s very similar to us. Not having an analogue was always important to us. Nowadays you can find anything, so being entirely unique is hard. But I think, at least in Bulgaria, we’re still quite unique in what we do.

There are other great bands here doing similar things. The problem is that the audience is still very small. Alternative music is only concentrated in Sofia and 2-3 other big cities. The Bulgarian market is still tiny and it’s pretty much impossible to earn enough from underground music. But we know how it is and we don’t have any illusions about it. We’re trying to change it by involving more people, by introducing them to this type of music. That’s our job as musicians. When someone likes one of these bands, it’s great for all of us. Involving more people in an alternative scene may be the most important thing you can do as a musician, because that’s good for the people, the scene, for everyone who is part of this adventure.

Do you have any upcoming concerts or shows where people can listen to you and see you?

We’re now in the process of arranging some concerts for this year. Apart from the electronic sound, we also do acoustic concerts. We love to rearrange our songs, playing them with guitars, ukulele and percussion. We are also doing DJ parties where we perform our own remixes. So, we have different types of concerts that we need to think about, and we’re arranging them right now in Bulgaria.

We’re also planning to do a European tour, which will involve a couple of countries. Last year we traveled to Germany and received great feedback, made connections and people are expecting us back this year. We’re also planning to do a tour of other Balkan countries. People here are often surprised to hear that we’re from Bulgaria because we don’t sound like it at all. When they hear our songs on the radio, they have no idea that we’re Bulgarians. Unfortunately, Bulgarian pop is almost non-existent outside of our borders. There are no stars from Bulgaria and that needs to change because we have so much to offer. Things are already improving, very slowly and the process can often seem cumbersome, but it is getting better and there’s a cause for optimism. It looks like it’s going to be quite a busy year for us and that’s great.

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