Reprogramming Music Systems for Data Justice
This year at Primavera Pro 2025, DigitalFems takes the stage to challenge how data shapes power in the music industry. With two key sessions, our feminist tech collective will present its ongoing work in building fairer, more transparent infrastructures—starting with the GenderMusicTech project.
🔹 June 4, 11:15–11:30 Ideas Showroom, Hall (link to session)
In this brief and direct showcase, DigitalFems will present GenderMusicTech, a European research and policy project addressing a structural flaw in today’s music systems: the absence of gender metadata. When metadata lacks gender perspective, recommendation algorithms reinforce historic inequalities—boosting the same profiles, sidelining others, and reducing diversity to tokenism.
GenderMusicTech isn’t about public exposure. It works through private, consent-based systems that let artists choose whether to contribute gender data for the purpose of building fairer algorithmic ecosystems. This initiative operates at the intersection of culture, rights and AI ethics.
🔹 June 6, 12:45–13:45 at Auditori: Panel debate: Blind Algorithms – The Invisible Bias in Music Metadata
Organized by UFI and APECAT, this debate dives deeper into the politics of metadata. Moderated by DigitalFems, the session brings together voices from music curation, AI ethics, and activism to tackle critical questions:
– What are music metadata, and why do they matter?
– How are recommendation systems shaped by invisible bias?
– What are feminist and queer movements demanding from tech governance?
– Can AI be used for justice rather than exploitation?
– How do we build data infrastructures that reflect the values of culture—not just the logic of commerce?
Panelists include:
- Roser Batlle (transparency and justice tech specialist, researcher al MTG-UPF).
- Javier Lorbada (music pitcher and digital strategist)
- Cori Chinicci, a music tech expert working at BMAT.
Through these two sessions, DigitalFems positions itself not just as a participant in the music industry—but as a catalyst for systemic change. In a time when algorithms increasingly shape what we hear, see, and value, the message is clear:
“If metadata can marginalize, it can also liberate—if we design it with intention.”
🔗 Learn more about Digitalfem’s project www.gendermusictech.org
Thanks Primavera Pro for giving a space to share our work.
