Allowing for equal opportunities for artists in music recommendation

Promoting diversity in the music sector is widely discussed on the media. While the major problem may lie deep in our society, music information retrieval contributes to promoting diversity or may create unequal opportunities for artists. For example, considering the known problem of popularity bias in music recommendation, it is important to investigate whether the short head of popular music artists and the long tail of less popular ones show similar patterns of diversityin terms of, for example, age, gender, or ethnic originor the popularity bias amplifies a positive or negative effect. I advocate for reasonable opportunities for artistsfor (currently) popular artists and artists in the long-tail alikein music recommender systems. In this work, I represent the position that we need to develop a deep understanding of the biases and inequalities because it is the essential basis to design approaches for music recommendation that provide reasonable opportunities. Thus, research needs to investigate the various reasons that hinder equal opportunity and diversity in music recommendation.