OpenLobby.EU
Explore

Digital Music Europe

DME

Digital Music Europe represents Europe’s leading digital audio services.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Emmanuelle Du Chalard (Head of Unit Communications Networks, Content and Technology)

16 Oct 2025 · Private copying levies

Meeting with Aurore Lalucq (Member of the European Parliament, Committee chair)

25 Sept 2025 · PSR/PSD

Meeting with Sergey Lagodinsky (Member of the European Parliament)

9 Sept 2025 · Exchange of Views

Response to A Culture Compass for Europe

13 May 2025

Please find Digital Music Europe's (DME) contribution attached.
Read full response

Meeting with Cynthia Ní Mhurchú (Member of the European Parliament)

12 May 2025 · Introduction

Meeting with Nikola Minchev (Member of the European Parliament)

7 May 2025 · Introductory meeting with representatives of DME

Meeting with Axel Voss (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur) and Google and

6 May 2025 · Copyright and generative AI

Response to Evaluation of the Geo-blocking Regulation

11 Mar 2025

Digital Music Europe (DME) represents European companies that have revolutionised how the world discovers, enjoys, and experiences music. DMEs music streaming services are available across the EU and offer the same audio catalogue everywhere. For this reason, music services have been excluded from the scope of the EUs 2018 Geo-blocking Regulation. In order to provide our services across Europe, we make a huge effort to adapt locally, including to local price levels and purchasing power. The inclusion of music would drive up the price of music streaming for European consumers. The main reason why our users would want to access our service in another territory is a lower price given that our catalogue is virtually identical and our services can be accessed in a multitude of languages. This would lead streaming services to increase their price in these countries in order to protect their revenues in larger and more developed markets. In this sense, the Geo-Blocking Regulation would just be a price regulation for music services, without any impact on the availability of content since it is already available everywhere. Not only would a price increase have a direct and adverse impact on consumers, who may leave the services for pirated or free alternatives, it would also lead to less revenues for the rightsholders. Ultimately, this would make it less viable for digital music services to invest and operate in certain European countries. Including music would fail to recognise the way music licensing works in Europe. While we obtain licenses covering multiple European countries, many licenses continue to be granted territory-by-territory, the same rights may be held by different rights-holders in different Member States, and the terms and rates of each license often differ by territory. Allowing users to access our service in other Member States would force us to renegotiate our licenses and would expose us to conflicting claims from rights-holders from different countries, especially from authors CMOs who continue to license on a national basis. Extending the Geo-blocking Regulation to music services would not improve the availability of music, but would harm European consumers, deprive music rightsholders of revenues, affect cultural diversity, and stifle the development of the European music services. Music services should therefore continue to be excluded from the EU Geo-blocking Regulation.
Read full response