Brussels, June 27th, 2025

At the board meeting ahead of summer and its annual general meeting in October, IMPALA confirmed its strategic priorities and brainstormed on the questions including the current economic climate, its impact on businesses and associations in the sector, as well as streaming reform and consolidation.

Members shared strategies to tackle economic challenges currently affecting  the music industry and creative sectors across various countries, including boosting finance options, focussing on music as an industry to access tax incentives and enterprise funding more effectively, acknowledging music’s soft power, resilience, and social value, reinforcing these arguments in public discourse and policy engagement.

The importance of producing robust economic impact studies was also highlighted, both to demonstrate the sector’s resilience and creation of value and to highlight the importance for governments to bet on the sector. France has recently published a study carried out by EY, looking at jobs, growth, etc.

Dan Fowler also joined the board to discuss the report he co-authored on the streaming market, taking IMPALA’s 10-point plan as a set of KPIs and tracking what has and hasn’t changed. The report outlines the emergence of a two-tier market and its impact on the independent music sector. 

As well as evaluating how a two-tier market has evolved, the authors benchmark the current state of the music streaming market against IMPALA’s streaming plan as a set of KPIs for the industry. 

The report cites “five critical areas for immediate attention”: 

• Combatting AI dilution and streaming fraud through cross-industry collaboration and regulation. 
• Reforming royalty distribution models to ensure fair access for all market participants and increasing subscription fees in line with inflation. 
• Enhancing transparency in DSP practices, especially concerning play-boosting tools and content de-monetisation. 
• Restricting and reversing market consolidation to maintain competitive diversity. 
• Embedding consultation and impact assessment into any future industry changes to avoid unintended harm.

These discussions will continue at Runda Digital Day in Zagreb.

About IMPALA

IMPALA was established in 2000 and now represents over 6000 independent music companies in Europe. 99% of Europe’s music companies are small, micro and medium businesses and self-releasing artists. Known as the independents, they are world leaders in terms of innovation and discovering new music and artists – they produce more than 80% of all new releases and account for 80% of the sector’s jobs. IMPALA’s mission is to grow the independent music sector sustainably, return more value to artists, promote diversity and entrepreneurship, improve political access, inspire change, and increase access to finance. IMPALA works on a range of key issues for its members and started a new co-funded work programme as an EU cultural network in 2025. IMPALA runs various award schemes and has a programme aimed at businesses who want to develop a strategic relationship with the European independent sector – Friends of IMPALA