What is the Music Economy Development Initiative (MEDI)?
The Music Economy Development Initiative (MEDI) is a global research and data partnership — led by the Center for Music Ecosystems and Global Citizen and a coalition of over 50 industry and development partners. Our mission is to build the evidence, data, and institutional case for music as a driver of jobs, trade, and international development.
What Does MEDI do?
MEDI has two strands:
Research
The MEDI Country Portal is the definitive, free-to-access source of country-specific music economy and development data — covering socioeconomic indicators, national policy and infrastructure. It is primarily built for policymakers, development finance institutions, and investors who need comparable, evidence-based data to identify where investment in music ecosystems will have the greatest economic return.
Partnerships
MEDI facilitates the programs, policies, and investment needed to build music ecosystems worldwide, with Africa as one of the focus regions. We work directly with governments, multilateral institutions, development finance institutions, and the private sector — including through initiatives like Move Afrika — to direct capital toward music infrastructure and support national copyright, business and regulatory reform.
How will we do this?
The MEDI research portal will provide policymakers, governments, and private sector partners with research, economic data, case studies, and frameworks to map music's potential to fight extreme poverty. The data will provide the foundation to support local ecosystem development, including policy and copyright reform, infrastructure investment, skills training, education, and capacity development.
Why Does This Matter?
Our vision is clear: a world where music is recognized and invested in as a serious economic sector, everywhere — generating jobs, export revenue, and sustainable local growth.
We see a world where in all villages, cities, and countries, music fuels incomes, concerts create jobs, and studios support neighborhoods. A young person with a guitar, a voice, or a song idea can succeed as an entrepreneur. And all this activity is helping to foster economic growth. Everyone, everywhere, should have access to music's potential. MEDI’s mission — in partnership and collaboration with a broad coalition — is to ensure this happens.
Looking to the future
With this research, we aim to establish music as a mainstream, investable economic sector everywhere. We're building, with local experts who understand what's best for their markets, the foundations that make that possible: intellectual property regulation, music education, and infrastructure investment. The more we demonstrate that music is an economy, the more it will be treated, financed, and governed as one
Please join us in this mission.
We thank our partners for their valuable support for this research
Why is MEDI essential?
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In 2023, global music copyright revenues totalled $45.5 billion, which continues to grow at a double-digit pace, increasing by 11% from 2022. This comprises $28.5bn in recorded music revenues, $12.9bn in authors' collective management organizations (CMOs) collections, and $4.2bn in direct music publisher income. Notably, the majority of these revenues—67.3% for recorded music and 87.2% for musical compositions—stem from digital consumption. These royalties rely on robust national laws and copyright infrastructure to track usage, collect revenues, and distribute them accurately to artists.
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While the current value and benefits generated by the music ecosystem are substantial, there is still significant room to grow. Many countries lack the institutions, including policies, frameworks, regulations, infrastructure, and norms, that support capturing music’s value as an economic good, which creates income on the ground for creators anywhere. In Africa, for example, the Atlantic Council points to a lack of IPR protections and enforcement as a missed opportunity to use music and creative IP to address extreme poverty. As it points out, these deficiencies produce “lost opportunities for wealth creation, solving youth unemployment, receipt of foreign exchange reserves, and development of local capital markets.”
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Music suffers from an ignorance created by its ubiquity. Because of music's widespread availability, some ignore what is needed to get it to us, the income it can generate, and what this income can provide as a tool to generate jobs, capture domestic and export revenue, and support global economic development.
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Music operates as an ecosystem, an interconnected web among those who create it, those who present it, and those who enjoy it—each plays an essential role in its health and growth. Success requires a strong and nimble ecosystem. As such, the value created within the music ecosystem and through music IP reverberates across countries and communities. The Recording Industry Association of America has estimated that for every $1 of revenue generated in the US music industry, an additional 50c was created in adjacent sectors. Music creates opportunity. In territories where youth unemployment is high, for example, music provides a way for young people to generate revenue and enter the employment market—whether as artists, entrepreneurs, or employees at other music businesses—which then allows them to partake in the broader consumer marketplace, feeding the entire downstream economy.
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Building music into how the world invests in economic development is an opportunity for all of us. Together, we can maximize music's potential as an income generator, an export sector, and an investment — for individuals, communities, governments, and society. This requires investment and policies demonstrating that music and the businesses and skills it engenders have value and, as such, are serious economic sectors. We hope MEDI accelerates this global effort, and the more partners we have, the better.