Music recommender systems and the copyright blind spot: conceptualizing the right to be heard

Abstract Music recommender systems: Copyright law secures the lawful availability of content on platforms, management of rights, or remuneration for use, but it remains indifferent to the allocation of cultural attention. Music recommender systems structure the conditions under which copyright can generate cultural and economic value. Their optimisation logics shaped by metadata quality, engagement metrics, and commercial incentives, influence which works circulate and which remain peripheral. Doctrinal blind spot: This article argues that the resulting condition of being represented but not heard exposes a doctrinal blind spot in the copyright system and engages constitutional concerns rooted in artistic freedom, freedom of expression, and the EU’s commitments to cultural diversity. When music discovery becomes infrastructural rather than incidental, cultural participation can no longer be assessed in terms of consumer access to content or platform availability but must also account for artist audibility. The right to be heard: The article reconstructs the right to cultural participation as a relational and infrastructural right to be heard pointing to the need for norms that prevent systemic exclusion where private infrastructures function as unavoidable gateways to cultural encounter. Drawing inspiration from the prominence requirement in the AVMS Directive, it argues that a prominence-based regulatory approach offers a proportionate response to governing attention in markets where exposure is no longer a by-product of availability but a function of design. By focusing on objectives rather than outputs and by leaving technical implementation to platforms, such an approach preserves the essence of the freedom to conduct a business while acknowledging that entrepreneurial autonomy cannot extend to the systematic foreclosure of cultural audibility.