The UK music industry is thriving – but there are still problems on the horizon

Trade body UK Music is billing its inaugural “Music by Numbers” report as the “definitive insight into the health of the British music industry”. Very healthy it is too.

The business contributed a sweet tune to the British economy in 2018, one worth £5.2bn, including £2.7bn of much needed export revenues. It also supported nearly 191,000 full-time jobs.

The live sector rocked up with £1.1bn, a 10 per cent rise, driven by a surge in festival ticket sales despite the venerable Glastonbury having one of its fallow years.

But recorded music also sang, throwing off £568m, up 5 per cent, with labels’ revenues up 3 per cent, vinyl sales growing 1.5 per cent, and streaming continuing to boom. The figures for publishing were also robust.

Quite something if you consider the predictions of doom that began with the rise of Napster (remember them?) and have only piped down relatively recently.

So, we can give the industry a resounding cheer, have a chuckle at outgoing culture secretary Nicky Morgan referencing Little Simz in her introduction (it feels a bit like Gordon Brown extolling the virtues of the Arctic Monkeys), buy a T-shirt and move on?

Well, up to a point. For a start, Brexit could throw a major spanner into the works.

Stars create big headlines and big numbers. Tours by acts such as Ed Sheeran, Adele, Sam Smith, the Rolling Stones regularly turn over multimillion-pound sums.

But you can’t produce them without a thriving grassroots scene to incubate them, and in any case lower down the ladder is where some of the best music is made.

The report points out that, for most creators, earnings don’t amount to much. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), musicians pulled in an average income of £23,059 in 2018 – well below the national average of £29,832. The Musicians Union has on its website a recent survey of freelancers in creative industries which found that the average worker loses an estimated £5,494 through working for free.

Big-name, big-ticket tours will continue whatever Boris Johnson and his friends foist upon a country they seem determined to wreck. Brexit, and especially a back-door no-deal Brexit that many fear is the government’s aim, could serve to make life impossible for smaller businesses and acts where margins are wafer-thin.

UK Music CEO Michael Dugher says the organisation has already seen evidence of acts cancelling or postponing European tours amid concerns over issues with travel and merchandise, an increasingly important part of artists’ (and venues’) earnings.

It’s a policy that could easily serve to knock the stuffing out of a remarkable revival that has been driven by a combination of entrepreneurial nous, hard work and the passion this industry uniquely inspires.

But it’s not just Brexit. Music has some unique issues that deserve attention if its success is to continue.

The Music Venue Trust, for example, says that more than a third of grassroots venues have closed over the past decade.

Business rates play a particularly bum note.

The members of music’s All-Party Parliamentary Group, in a letter to former chancellor Philip Hammond, said the 2017 revaluation had amounted to a 31 per cent increase in business rates payable by grassroots venues. But the retail discount scheme, as announced in the 2018 Autumn Budget, currently discriminates against them by stating that they “are not similar in nature” to pubs and clubs.

There has been some positive movement on the part of government, such as its support for the “agent of change principal” in planning rules which was described as a “seismic victory” by campaigners. It affords protection for venues at risk from, for example, gentrification and complaints about noise from new developments.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that British music is a cultural treasure as well as a financial one. But for all the success reported by UK Music to be sustained, the industry could surely use a little more help from its friends among policymakers.