An alliance of six music companies has been created to lobby on behalf of their members. Dubbed Digital Music Europe, the founding members are 7Digital, Deezer, Qobuz, Soundcharts, Soundcloud, and Spotify. It’s stated purpose is to serve as a resource for policy-makers, media and the digital music industry. The goal of their advocacy is to promote policies that will create a friendly business environment for digital music companies. The issues they intend to weigh on include copyright, taxation, data transfers, geo-blocking, digital contracts, online platforms, and e-privacy.
Hans-Holger Albrecht has stated the following as the purpose for the group:
For a decade, European digital music companies have led the transformation of the
music industry globally. Bringing these companies together to create DME is a great
opportunity to highlight European leadership in this sector, inspire other European
entrepreneurs and create a unique voice with policy-makers.
Although the group is only a day old, they have already hit the ground running and have filed their first lawsuit. The lawsuit is against Tunein, a radio streaming website, and claims copyrights were violated. Although Tunein has not yet filed a defense, it is likely that they will respond to by stating that they are merely a pipeline for content, and that they don’t always know when any specific music is uploaded or played on their site. This is the same defense that other companies like YouTube, Google, and Facebook have taken to allow user generated content on their sites.
Many of the Digital Music Europe member companies have already transformed the digital music landscape. The recorded music market grew by 4% in Europe in 2016. This is the fastest growth in almost two decades, and it can largely be attributed to music streaming.
