Micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and small CSOs are critical to European music ecosystems. Given continuous technological and societal disruption, it is important for these small players to access reliable data on music consumption and production. however, most lack market research competence. Public data, such as those collected by Eurostat and Eurobarometer, could help fill this gap, but requires technical expertise to access.
SurveyHarmonies is a solution inspired by “survey recycling”: i.e., using variables and questions from prior best-practice surveys. This solution builds on SINUS-Institut’s prior work with CEEMID, which used survey recycling to increase data quality in prior music surveys in Central Europe. SurveyHarmonies built a “bank” of best-practice questions on music consumption and production; developed an app that imports these questions into DIY surveying tools; and integrated survey findings with open data using R.
The SurveyHarmonies project was funded under the European Commission‘s MusicAIRE program.
Between August 2022 and May 2023, SINUS cooperated with CEEMID founding partner Reprex to build the SurveyHarmonies toolkit, pilot test it with music industry stakeholders in four countries, and present it at the European Survey Research Association 2023 international conference. The project outputs, assessed by the European Commission with a score of 90/100, are currently being reworked within the context of the SINUS-coordinated Horizon Europe project OpenMusE.
As musicologists, we‘re aware of the challenges facing music MSMEs and committed to helping them navigate the changing marketplace. SurveyHarmonies will level the market re-search playing field for small players in the music sector, and set a new best practice in the creative and cultural industries as a whole.
