Music metadata as a fundamental-rights question, or the EU’s positive obligations to secure cultural visibility and equality online

Abstract Music metadata—credits, identifiers, language labels, territorial tags and genre descriptors—functions as the operative infrastructure of streaming. It shapes what becomes searchable, recommendable, charted and remunerated. This article argues that metadata is therefore not a neutral technical resource but a constitutional site where structural inequality is produced or mitigated. When metadata is sparse, standardized around dominant markets, or mis-specified, the resulting visibility and remuneration deficits disproportionately affect minority-language repertoires, music from smaller territories, field recordings and traditional archives, and women and non-binary creators. The article situates these ‘structural metadata harms’ within the EU’s fundamental-rights framework, contending that Article 22 CFR (respect for cultural and linguistic diversity), read together with Articles 11 (freedom of expression), 13 (artistic freedom), 17(2) (IP), 21 (non-discrimination) and 23 (gender equality), constrains and guides metadata governance. Drawing on CJEU rights-balancing and ECtHR doctrines of positive obligations and indirect structural discrimination, it develops the claim that EU regulatory and standard-setting choices must secure the practical and effective enjoyment of cultural visibility and equal rights-realization online.