Listen Local Opt-In Database

Opt-in Database

The Write-in Database collects, contrasts, and if necessary, corrects information about musical artists, and music work (recordings). We only collect information about commercially released music, because in this case, the artist and their representatives made the music with information public and publicly retrievable. The Write-In Database therefore does not require consent from the artist or the artist’s representative.

The Write-in Database is a very important starting point to monitor the performance of the local (national or regional) repertoire and identify programs that make the music less visible, or may result in late or missed payments.

However, the Write-in Database will invevitable contain many incorrect or obsolete information, and often we will not find correct information about the artist. Or worse still, we will find that incorrect information is used by various web resources and services, which will lead to negative consequences:

• ☐ The artist may be recommended to wrong audiences, and receive negative feedback, which will result in low ratings and difficulty in finding future audiences.
• ☐ The artist may not be found by correct audiences, resulting in low visibility.
• ☐ Low visibility or negative ratings will decrease current and future revenues.

The Listen Local Opt-in Database allows the artist (or the artist’s lawful representative) to take control about the information available about the artist, the artists’ music works and music recordings on the internet.

All the information in the Opt-In Database is protected by data protection rules. We collect this information about the artists with four objectives:

1. Help the artist identifying and correcting incorrect information that may lead to wrong perception, low visibility or missed payments.
2. Help the artist in easily communicating new or corrected information, relying on machine-to-machine communnication, to improve the perception, visibility and payments.
3. Help the artist to participate in various support schemes (for national repertoires, local language use, minority languages, or correction of gender-based biases.)
4. Carry out scientific research about data and metadata problems that put small langauge, small nation, and non-mainstream artists at a disadvantage to find audiences, visibility and income.

Name

One of the most frequent metadata problem on music streaming services is name ambiguity. There are many artists named ‘Rain’. How can an algorithm recommend the correct Rain to a user? How can we make sure that the correct Rain is getting paid?

There are many national and international name authorities that give a globally unique identifier for artists. Unfortunately, their use is not mandatory yet in most web services. Name authorities are great starting points to start name disambiguation, but first of all, we have to record the various used names of the artist.

Recording the name of the artist, when it is noot already available in various national or global encyclopedias, requries explicit opt-in from the artist to the Listen Local Opt-In Database.

Location data

Location is very important for connecting artists and audiences. Stronger, and more profitable connections are made when music fans can visit live performances, and have access to information about the purchasing options of the artits’ works, recordings, and merchandise.

Our service is particularly aiming to avoid the “colonization” of local ecoystems by global artists and the global repertoire. We want to increase the local visibility of artits, and we want to help artists to find new audiences in specific locations (including potential export destinations.)

Location-aware recommendations (both for artists and for audiences/curators) requires recording location information.

Our write-in database contains the following information, which after opt-in can be corrected by the artist:

We will collect further location specific information to increase the likelihood of new matches between fans/curators and artists.

Language

The use of language is very important in almost all music genres to communicate with the audience. The use of language often allows to imply the ethnicity or nationality of the artist. However, the use of language can be determined by a competent listener or increasingly by AI application.

In many countries, local content regulation incentives to use of the local language content. Such incentives cannot work without recording the information about the language of the lyrics and the titles.

Our opt-in databaase collect information about what people think about the use of language of an artist. The opt-in database allows the artist to control this information, and make corrections. Providing us with this information is optional.

Gender

There are many initiatives in place all over Europe to correct historical biases against 👩 non-male or 🌈 non-cis-male artists. Such incentives only work with artists who reveal their gender self-identification.

Our Write-in Database contains the “subjective” information about the artist’s (publicly) perceived sex at birth or perceived gender. Our opt-in database gives the artist control over this information in the public domain about the artist.

When the artist opts-in to reveal his/her/their gender identification, we add an “objective” gender variable next to the “subjective” information, and whenever possible, we give instructions or assist corrections.