Europe’s Music Participation Gap: New Data Reveals Who’s Included And Who’s Left Behind

For the first time in decades, researchers have comprehensive, comparable data on how Europeans across seven countries engage with music as listeners, creators, and active cultural citizens. How? In 2025, OpenMusE conducted population-representative surveys in Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia—together representing a substantial majority of the EU population.

Around 70% believe that music is critical to their overall wellbeing. Diving into the data tells us why this is so, painting a detailed picture of musical Europe: vibrant in some dimensions, unequal in others, and undergoing generational transformation.

Music in Europe: Unequal Access, Unequal Participation?

Concert attendance patterns reveal both vibrancy and inequality. Across the seven surveyed countries, approximately 21% of the population attended at least one live music event within the past month, and 65% within 2025 or 2024. However, young adults (16-29) attend concerts at roughly double the rate of those over 60. High-income respondents attend many more concerts than low-income respondents—and spend significantly more on tickets, food and drink, merchandise, and other expenses. And urban residents enjoy vastly better access to diverse live music offerings than rural populations, with smaller towns and peripheral regions systematically underserved.

Similarly, while 14% of those surveyed play a musical instrument and 23% sing, these aggregate figures mask notable inequalities. Age emerges as the sharpest dividing line: 25% of young adults (16-29) play instruments compared to just 7% of those over 60. For singing, the gap is even wider—39% of young adults versus a fraction among seniors.

But socioeconomic status may be the most troubling predictor. Individuals identifying as “high social status” participate in music-making at roughly double the rate of those identifying as low status, and those who say they often struggle to pay their bills show substantially lower participation across all musical activities. The message is clear: in Europe, both music access and active music-making correlate with privilege.

Generational Discovery Divides

How Europeans find new music reveals a second societal fracture. Among adults under 50, streaming platforms dominate music discovery, rated as important by over three-fourths of respondents. But for those over 60, radio remains king. Manual searches for familiar artists are used by 90% of 16-39 year-olds but only 53% of those over 70. Creating personal playlists follows similar patterns: 87% of young adults versus 46% of seniors. These aren’t merely preferences—they represent diverging pathways through musical life, with implications for which artists get discovered, which genres circulate, and whose music gets heard.

What Else Does the Data Cover?

The survey examines numerous dimensions of musical life: engagement with live and recorded music, music education (formal and informal), music discovery, music and social/cultural life, music and politics, music and human rights, music and health/wellbeing, music and sustainable development, and musical creation (both non-commercial and commercial).

Each section reveals patterns of engagement, barriers to access, and policy priorities. For example, there is a clear, cross-national consensus on the right to music education: between 64% (Poland) and 69% (Italy) of respondents across all five CAWI countries believe music education should be universal and free. Opposition is minimal everywhere—between 3-7%.

Yet this consensus exists alongside an uneven reality. School-based music education ranges from 48% participation in France to 79% in Poland at the primary level, with dramatic drop-offs in many countries by secondary school. And the most commonly taught subjects—basic music theory (68%), Western classical music (41%), and traditional folk music (37%)—suggest that curricula may not reflect the diverse musical practices that Europeans encounter in their daily lives.

Smarter Policy Through Data Fusion

Our survey findings aren’t stand-alone statistics. When taken together—and merged with other data collected in OpenMusE—they offer evidence for policy debates on how to ensure that Europe’s music landscapes and economies alike flourish amidst disruptive change.

For instance: the survey found that 55% of respondents support offering concert vouchers for students and the underprivileged. Sounds like charity. But in parallel, we found that concertgoers—even students—spend a lot of money on food and drink, merchandise, travel, and hospitality (for more, see our valuation study). By combining these spending figures with data on concert attendance and on the interrelation of economic sectors, we found that ticket sales represent under half of live music’s total economic impact. Suddenly, our data point on concert vouchers looks less like charity than stimulus: each euro invested by a member state in concert vouchers could drive considerable commercial activity across hospitality, transport, and retail. Just the kind of smart intervention the Competitiveness Compass recommends.

This is one example of why cultural participation data isn’t only academic—it’s a core foundation for understanding and leveraging music’s true value.

Open Questions? Open Access

All survey data, documentation, and an interactive dashboard are freely available. The online sample dashboard enables exploration of key findings across countries and demographics. Full data and methodological documentation will be available at https://github.com/openmusiceurope by April 1st, 2026.

The survey was driven by urgent questions: How do we…

• Ensure that music remains a public good, accessible to all within society?
• Maintain diverse representation and discovery in an algorithmic age?
• Help under-resourced local music scenes not only survive, but flourish?

Now, we have an evidence base to answer these questions and more.