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Background

The movement to unite and strengthen the European urban culture scene has developed during the last year. In May 2008, artists and professionals from the European Urban Music scene were invited to Stockholm for the event Make it Blast! / Diversidad!  Seminars and debates, followed by a series of concerts with artists from six different European countries, were organized to create a platform for Urban Music in Europe. 


This was the starting-point of Diversidad and the organisation of several events to mobilize the European Urban music scene - an initiative supported by the European Union, European Music Office (EMO), Diversité and other institutions and companies. During 2008, several activities took place in Stockholm, Madrid, Vienna, Paris, Berlin as part of the European Commission's call for Intercultural Dialogue 2008.


The positive outcome of the events during 2008, resulted in a renewal of the support from the EU who recently approved for a new grant for period of three years. The different activities that will take place around Europe for Diversidad 2 is now being defined by European Music Office and its partners for Diversidad. EU-Music Days 2009 is the beginning of the new period of Diversidad activities to work for increased diversity throughout Europe. 
 
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Objectives & Vision

Dedicated to urban artists and urban culture professionals, the objectives for the EU-Music are to:

1. Increase exchange between artists, urban culture performers, companies, organizations, institutions and media in Europe and rise the awareness of the European Urban Music scene.

2. Create a platform to develop and promote European Urban Music locally and internationally.

3. Support and encourage urban music creativity through educational workshops, conferences and panels.

4. Reward the best European and international artists through the upcoming EU-Music Awards. By creating the EU-Music Awards the long-term goal is to establish a higher value for European acts world-wide.

5. Create debate and work together to enhance the visibility of European Urban artists in european media. 

Europe has a huge capacity in terms of urban culture. At the moment, there is little knowledge about different local scenes and few European Urban artists have achieved international success. By organizing this forum and building bridges between the different local urban scenes throughout Europe to create an awareness of the quality of European Urban Music, EU-Music aim at developing the European Urban Music scene and promoting it throughout Europe as well as internationally.

The goal of this movement is to open doors for individual artists and culture performers and to create a fruitful environment for companies and institutions working with urban music-, film- and entertainment. By acknowledging outstanding talents and rewarding some of the best actors, the goal also is to strengthen the value of European Urban Culture.

The long-term vision is to form a united market for European Urban Music and related activities, and to increase its value, in order to achieve international success.
 
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A Music Industry in Change

The music industry is an industry of great change. Most actors in the business refer to it as a crisis. Some claim that the music industry itself must adapt to the new technology and to the new reality. 

Today’s youth may be the first modern generation to grow up without expecting to have to pay for music. Without compensation for artists from creating work, or compensation for others who find and filter the art, record, promote and distribute it, the alternatives for producing becomes very limited. 

New technology, new behavior and new attitudes require new rules and regulations. Increased internationalization requires harmonization of existing rules. 

The concentration of actors in the industry also has a major impact on the music market. The number of independent labels keeps growing. As a result of the 50% fall in turnover between 2000 - 2007 in Sweden, the number of employees in the music business decreased significantly. Fewer employed in larger music companies, consequently resulted in an increase of self-employed music companies by 100%.

With an increased number of smaller companies comes more diversity. It also brings larger needs for a platform where independent companies can meet.

EU-Music is an initiative to bring together as many actors as possible in order to create fruitful meetings and collective attempts to find new ways of overcoming the difficulties most music companies face today.