Can platform regulation and competition law level the playing field for creators?

As streaming and social media platforms tighten their grip on music distribution, a new study from the Fair MusE project asks a timely question: can existing EU laws—like the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and competition rules—be used to tip the scales toward fairness for creators? The answer, it turns out, may lie not in drafting new rights, but in enforcing the ones already on the books.

Insights from Task 2.5 (Work Package 2) of the Fair MusE Project

In the digital era, music has never been more available to listeners. Yet, creators continue to face deep and persistent inequalities. Deliverable D2.3 of the Fair MusE project, Roles of EU competition law and regulation across online music platforms, investigates how EU competition law and new regulatory frameworks such as the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the Platform-to-Business Regulation (P2B) can be leveraged to promote transparency, rebalance bargaining power, and support the enforcement of creators’ rights in the music streaming economy.

The Study’s focus lies in the potential of these instruments to materialize the rights enshrined in Articles 18-23 of the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive, which includes the right of authors and performers to adequate and proportionate remuneration. While these rights exist on paper, their implementation across Member States remains inconsistent and fragmented. The report complements a dedicated study (D2.2) that finds that national transpositions have often lacked ambition, leading to a system where creators are formally entitled to fair treatment but lack the means to make those rights effective in practice. This problem is further intensified by the highly centralised and opaque nature of digital music platforms, which continue to exercise extraordinary control over how music is accessed, monetised, and ranked.

The analysis combines legal and policy research with qualitative insights from stakeholder interviews and case studies and focuses on both structural challenges and enforcement gaps. The resulting Study maps the normative landscape and examines how different legal instruments could reinforce one another to improve the bargaining position of music creators across the EU.

A particularly pressing issue emerges from the growing role of social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, which now serve as key channels for music discovery, circulation, and monetisation. These platforms play a central role in shaping the visibility and earnings of creators. Yet, they fall largely outside the scope of the DSM Directive’s transparency and remuneration provisions. As such, some of the most powerful exploiters of music content are not bound by the very rights designed to protect the people who produce the content. This regulatory blind spot emphasises the urgency of using complementary legal tools, such as the DSA, DMA, and competition law, to close existing gaps and ensure fairness in an evolving platform economy.

Platform dependency and lack of transparency

Our starting point is the intensifying dependency of music creators on dominant digital platforms, not only for distribution but also for economic survival and visibility. In today’s streaming ecosystem, presence on major platforms is no longer optional but a prerequisite for reaching audiences and generating any form of income. Yet creators must make their music available without meaningful insight into how their work is circulated, ranked or monetised. While the analogue era relied heavily on collective systems and negotiated frameworks, these too were marked by persistent transparency challenges. In the digital environment, those issues have not only persisted but deepened: platforms now provide limited and often non-standardised data, leaving creators with little clarity about who listens to their music, how often, in which regions, and under what financial terms. To maintain visibility, creators must continually adapt to platform dynamics they do not control and cannot see, whether in algorithmic recommendations, playlist placements, or user engagement metrics. This creates a profound structural dependency: creators are tied to systems that determine their exposure and earnings. However, these platforms provide few tools for understanding or contesting those outcomes. Intermediaries such as labels, aggregators, or CMOs may buffer this dependency, but they also often operate with incomplete data. The collapse of projects like the Global Repertoire Database (GRD) highlights how fragile efforts at collective transparency remain. In this vacuum, dominant platforms act as both gatekeepers and data holders, shaping the terms of cultural participation while shielding the infrastructure that governs it.

Competition law can be a tool for fairness… but it is rarely used

Our Study makes a strong case for re-examining the role of EU competition law in addressing some of the most deep-rooted asymmetries in the digital music market. Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which prohibits abuse of a dominant position, is identified as a potentially promising instrument. This is all the more the case in this moment, in which EU competition law is undergoing a fundamental transformation that will affect enforcement priorities at EU and national level. National economic dependency rules, too, should be further explored as avenues to bolster music creators’ rights.

One pathway explored is the idea that music exploitation data may constitute an “essential facility” in today’s digital economy. If music creators cannot access data about their own works, their exclusion from negotiation and valuation processes is not only unfair; it may be unlawful under competition law. Moreover, where platforms or large intermediaries favour major rightsholders with privileged access to information, visibility, or commercial terms, this could constitute discriminatory treatment in breach of competition rules.
The Study also highlights a regulatory shift with significant implications: the 2022 EU Guidelines on collective bargaining by solo self-employed persons. These now explicitly allow creators to collectively negotiate working conditions without falling foul of antitrust law. In a sector where most musicians are freelancers facing platforms alone, this change opens the door for new forms of collective organisation and legal empowerment.

Yet the challenges remain real. Market definition in multi-sided digital platforms is complex, and competition law enforcement is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Still, we argue that these are not reasons for inaction but rather signals that strategic litigation and coordinated advocacy are urgently needed.

Platform regulation is a new but still incomplete venue

The DSA and the DMA stand as new tools for regulating the behaviour of online platforms. While not designed specifically for the music sector, they contain provisions that could improve transparency, procedural fairness, and data access for creators, especially when used to reinforce the DSM Directive.

The DSA requires platforms to publish clear terms of service, explain algorithmic decision-making, and implement internal complaint-handling systems. For platforms classified as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), such as YouTube and TikTok, the obligations extend to risk assessments and transparency reporting, which could offer new entry points for creator advocacy.

Under the DMA, designated gatekeepers (such as Apple, Meta, and Alphabet) are subject to ex anteobligations to ensure fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory access to platform infrastructure and data. This includes rights for business users to access performance data and to avoid being locked into exclusive arrangements.

However, despite the possibilities offered by these new rules, the study stresses that music streaming platforms, such as Spotify or Deezer, are not currently designated as gatekeepers or VLOPs. In addition, the legal categories used in the DSA and DMA such as “business user” or “recipient of the service” may not fully capture the roles of authors, performers, or CMOs. This creates a regulatory grey zone in which creators may fall through the cracks.

Still, our research finds that the DSA and DMA provide a normative and legal vocabulary that creators and their representatives can (and should!) begin to use to contest opacity and asymmetry. Combined with competition law and DSM rights, these instruments can support more meaningful accountability in platform-governed music markets.

Enforcement: We do not need rights, we need to enforce the ones we have already

Even where legal protections exist, our research finds that existing rights are rarely invoked. For creators, enforcement remains limited. It is fragmented across jurisdictions, difficult to access, and rarely coordinated in ways that would make their rights practically enforceable. They also, especially small and independent creators, important barriers such as limited access to legal advice, little knowledge of applicable rights, and high litigation costs. The result is that most do not challenge unfair practices and instead they exit the market or remain silent.

National courts, competition authorities, and regulators each have a role to play, but we argue that collective enforcement mechanisms are one of the most viable pathways forward. This includes litigation by CMOs, unions, or advocacy groups, as well as coordinated complaints under the DSA or DMA. Therefore, our Study calls for more sector-specific guidance, funding for legal support structures, and EU-wide monitoring of enforcement trends under Articles 18-23 of the DSM Directive.

A push for engagement

Our work has demonstrated that the route to fairness in digital music markets lies not in creating new rights, but in materialising and enforcing the legal tools that already exist. The DSM Directive, the DSA, the DMA, and competition law each offer levers to tackle opacity, platform dependency, and unequal bargaining power. Considered collectively, these frameworks provide the basis for a more balanced and transparent digital environment, especially if concerned stakeholders seize the opportunity to act.

The findings of this deliverable are not simply diagnostic: they reveal where legal avenues remain underused and where enforcement gaps can be closed. They also illustrate how rights under the DSM Directive can be reinforced by duties under the DSA, DMA, or competition law. However, the time for mere analysis has passed. What is needed now is mobilisation and institutional commitment. European Union law has the frameworks and the tools. Creators have the need. The momentum must come from all sides.

The Study calls on regulators to issue clearer guidance and proactively monitor compliance with transparency and data access obligations in the platform economy to ensure that fair remuneration and contractual redress are more than aspirational goals. It challenges platforms to meet not just the letter but the spirit of their obligations by supporting verifiable, fair systems of attribution and reporting. And it encourages creator organisations, unions, and CMOs to engage with these tools collectively to negotiate, litigate and pressure for meaningful structural change. For stakeholders committed to building a fairer music ecosystem, this research offers a roadmap and an invitation: to collaborate, to coordinate, and to act!