6 About the Survey Program

This survey program grew out of necessity, originally in the relatively mature but still emerging markets of Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia to fill in gaps in the industry and official statistical data and improve the pricing and the advocacy work for a more benevolent tax regime on behalf of collective management societies. However, because of the problems that we faced in these markets, CEEMID expanded rapidly into a pan-European data resource.

CEEMID was a cooperative project without a permanent staff, budget or legal form. One of the initiators of the program, who designed the professional work, Daniel Antal, first registered CEEMID as a trademark, and eventually formed a start-up from the CEEMID team in 2020. This is Reprex, which is more than a continuation of the CEEMID project. It is founded on the belief that it created a unique know-how, technology and value offering by figuring out how to combine small data into larger data pools, how to combine tiny or non-existent research budgets into a collaborative resource.

Consolidated Independent has been cooperating with the survey program in 2019 and co-produced a report with CEEMID in January 2020. This Report received a very warm feedback and encouraged us to broaden this cooperation to a much larger geographical and market coverage.

6.1 What is CEEMID?

CEEMID (Central and Eastern European Music Industry Databases) was created out of necessity following a CISAC Good Governance Seminar for European Societies in 2013. The adoption of European single market and copyright rules, and the increased activity of competition authority and regulators required a more structured approach to set collective royalty and compensation tariffs in the region.

In 2014 three collective management societies, SOZA, Artisjus and HDS realized that need to make further efforts to modernize the way they measure their own economic impact, the economic value of their licenses to remain competitive in advocating the interests Vis-à-vis domestic governments, international organizations like CISAC and GESAC and the European Union. They signed a Memorandum of Understanding with their consultant to set up the CEEMID databases and to harmonize their efforts (Artisjus et al. 2014).

CEEMID was designed to follow the best European practices on statistical harmonization and was already featured as an innovativ best practice in the 40th anniversary of Pan European Surveying seminar in 2015. As an initiative born out of necessity, it aimed fill in the gaps of underdeveloped official cultural statics by following the guidelines of Eurostat’s ESSNet (Antal 2015).

From the originally envisioned, centralized, permission-based data structure, due to practical considerations, CEEMID switched to a more flexible, decentralized approach. This approach is based on continuous data integration, which requires permissions to use business confidential information only in use. We know where the data is, and if you have permission to use a specific data source, for example, because you are affiliated with IFPI or CISAC, we combine all data available with the data we bring in. We never take out data, but we can greatly enrich and analyze better the data CEEMID partner already have on their behalf.

While CEEMID is aware of and uses the metadata of CISAC’s, IFPI’s, EAO’s, and other industry sources’ data, it does not contain this data, only when a user with permission for the use of these industry sources requires the integration of such data with other CEEMID data, or user-specific data. While this approach makes sharing results more cumbersome, it provides a path to increase the number of useful indicators from a few dozens to around a thousand. Furthermore, it exponentially increases the value of CISAC’s, IFPI’s or EAO’s data, especially when designing better royalty rates, or creating economic evidence for litigation. Take a look at a simple, non-confidential example blog post.

This transparent, open source, open data, open collaboration based approach allowed a rapid extension of CEEMID to the whole of Europe and go even beyond. As a result of continuous data integration it already includes hundreds of indicators foreseen in all pillars of the planned European Music Observatory, which are presented in the Demo Music Observatory.

The CEEMID survey program worked together with music granting agencies, music export offices and collective management societies and countless associations to reach a representative segment of all professional, semi-professional and amateur artists in the countries covered and collect missing cost, revenue, work condition, education, and grant participation data.

6.2 Reprex

CEEMID was a cooperative project without a permanent staff, budget or legal form. One of the initiators of the program, who designed the professional work, Daniel Antal, first registered CEEMID as a trademark, and eventually formed a start-up from the CEEMID team in 2020.

Reprex is founded on the belief that it created a unique know-how, technology and value offering by figuring out how to combine small data into larger data pools, how to combine tiny or non-existent research budgets into a collaborative resource. Through research workflow automation and survey harmonization, how to decrease research costs and increase the value of pre-existing data assets, and create big value on a shoestring research budget. Reprex believes that it can help small industry players to cut the long and costly road to actually deploy modern valuations, AI & machine learning, forecasting with its innovative approach.

In other words, the research program, which includes this survey, is currently in a state of institutionalization and it is seeking the validation of its open source, open data, open collaboration based business model. Reprex is in competition in the #2 ranked university-backed incubator program in the world to find a long-term sustainable business model for offering affordable, collaborative and largely automated research for music and the broader creative sectors. Reprex’s team is formed from professionals in the industry and in academia who had been building up without a permanent organization the CEEMID Music Professionals Survey Program, currently the largest music industry survey program in the world, in the period 2014-2019. Because the data program quickly grew out of Central and Eastern Europe, and has been largely pan-European years ago, and it is expanding beyond Europe, it will drop the CEEMID name at one point, but the survey program is the same, organically growing research product that helped many music stakeholders to make good decisions and improve their standing in the public and increase their revenues.

References

Antal, Daniel. 2015. “Creating Better National Cultural Statistics with Eurobarometer Datasets and ESSNet-Culture Technical Recommendations.” Köln:Germany. http://www.gesis.org/fileadmin/upload/events/EB-Symposium/Poster/Antal_Poster.pdf.

Artisjus, HDS, SOZA, and Candole Partners. 2014. “Measuring and Reporting Regional Economic Value Added, National Income and Employment by the Music Industry in a Creative Industries Perspective. Memorandum of Understanding to Create a Regional Music Database to Support Professional National Reporting, Economic Valuation and a Regional Music Study.”