KEY FINDINGS

• The cultural value chain is rapidly being transformed from a pipeline-like configuration to a network model – and few countries have a strategy in place to deal with these changes.
• Very few Parties have designed and implemented digital culture policies that go beyond initiatives undertaken to digitize or strengthen specific nodes of the value chain.
• In the Global South, despite the advantages resulting from mass adoption of mobile broadband, many countries lack infrastructure and are unable to consolidate a market for cultural goods and services in the digital environment.
• The volume of data circulating on the Internet is growing exponentially and revenues are also increasing. In 2016, digital revenues in the music market grew by 17.7%, driven by a sharp 60.4% increase in the share of streaming revenues. This was the first time that digital revenues made up 50% of the recorded music market.
• The public sector may entirely lose its agency on the creative scene if a targeted approach to address the rise and market concentration of large platforms or the monopoly on artificial intelligence is not adopted.
• A new type of relationship between the public sector, private companies and civil society that is based upon interactivity, collaboration and the co-construction of policy frameworks has not yet emerged.

Photo: Creative Commons, license under CC-BY-SA - Kër Thiossane/SlideMedia, 2016, Senegal