Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether her department has considered legislating or amending the Online Safety Act (Section 162) so that Ofcom could require music streaming services and music video services to provide to independent researchers with information about how their algorithms select music for users and to assess whether it provides a level playing field.

DCMS has no current plans to amend Section 162 of the Online Safety Act (OSA). DCMS has committed to consult to establish the framework for researchers to access data held by digital platforms under section 154A. The Act sets out that the data be for the purposes of ‘independent research into online safety matters’, which is defined as anything relating to Ofcom’s online safety functions. This does not include algorithms to select music for users.