The BritishMusic

IndustryAdaption to the challenges of the twenty-first century

Stuart MossLeeds Metropolitan University

s.moss@leedsmet.ac.uk@ents_leeds_met

Some factsThe UK Music Industry was worth £3.9bn in 2009, up 4.7% on 2008.

(PRS, 2010)

The UK is the second largest (behind the USA) source of repertoire in the world. The UK is the world’s fourth-largest music market, accounting for 9.2% of global sales in 2009. The biggest selling album in the world in 2007, 2008 and 2009 was by a British artist (Coldplay / Amy Winehouse / Susan Boyle). UK artists accounted for 48.8% of album sales in the UK. Rock was the biggest genre in 2009’s albums market, but Pop closed the gap to just two percentage points (29% of sales compared to Rock's 31%).

(BPI, 2010a)

Henderson (2009)

Creative destruction

Genre development

Moss and Henderson (2009)

Traditional music supply chain(for purchased music)

Moss and Henderson (2009)

The labels

The 'big four'

Independent music labels also feature heavily in the UK

In order to remain viable many use the 'big four' to distribute their products, particularly Sony Music.

The MP3 Supply Chain(for purchased music)

Moss and Henderson (2009)

Music doesn't HAVE to be bought to be legally consumed, but do the artists benefit?

SPOTIFY: With Spotify, we’ll get 0.003 EUR/play. If you listen to the album all the way through, we’ll get 0.029 EUR.If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we’ll get 0.29 EURIf you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 2.94 EURIf you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get 29.47 EUR!If you use the free version of Spotify, it won’t cost you anything. Spotify will make money from ads. 

DEEZER: (A Spotify like service in UK and France)Deezer seems to pay a little more.We’ve been getting 0.006 EUR/play from them. That’s 0.052 EUR/album play. If you listen to the album 10 timeson Deezer, we’ll get 0.52 EUR. If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 5.2 EUR. If you listen to the album1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get a whopping 52 EUR! If you use the free version of Deezer, it won’t cost you anything and Deezer will make money from the ads.

eMUSIC:

eMusic is a subscription service. The cost of the album will depend on the plan you have. We get roughly $0.29/song or $2.60/album (9 songs). 

Hypebot (2011)

2010 sales in the UKSpend on music fell by 8% (lowest since 1997).

Single sales rose by 6%, album sales fell by 7%.

Value of download sales: Albums 17.5% (+5.8% since 2007);Singles 98.7% (8% rise since 2007).

Physical sales leaders – fairly even split: HMV; Tesco; Amazon.

(MINTEL, 2011)

BPI (2010b)

Some facts about UK downloading152,700,000 - sales of singles in 2009, 98% of which

were digital

500,000,000 - digital singles sold to date in UK by Sept 2010

50,000,000 - digital albums sold to date in UK by Sept 2010

1,200,000,000 - single music tracks illegally downloaded in 2010 from unauthorised sources

£280.5m - retail value of digital music market in 2009, 20% of overall £1.4bn recorded music market

£984,000,000 - retail value of single tracks downloaded in 2010 from unauthorised sources

82p – average retail price of single digital track

Combatting IP theft (1)•The ACS:Law debacle

•The Digital Economy Act (2010)

•Performing Right Society (PRS) have proposed a 'traffic light' plan for search engines

Combatting IP theft (2)The British Government has suggested:

– A cross-industry body, perhaps modelled on the Internet Watch Foundation, to be charged with identifying infringing websites against which action could be taken

– A streamlined legal process to make it possible for the courts to act quickly

– A responsibility on search engines and ISPs to take reasonable steps to make it harder to access sites that a court has deemed contain unlawful content or promote unlawful distribution of content

– A responsibility on advertisers to take reasonable steps to remove their advertisements from these sites

– A responsibility on credit card companies and banks to remove their services from these sites

(BBC, 2011b)

Live MusicContinued growth area.

Large-scale live music across all the UK attracts at least 7.7m attendances by domestic and overseas (5%) music tourists.

'Music tourists' contribute £864m per year to the UK economy (equivalent to 19,700 full-time jobs).

Legislation and bureaucracy governing live music events has been reduced.

(UK Music, 2011)

An Overcrowded Music Festival Market

2010 festival income was up 20% on 2009

Ticket sales much slower in 2011

31 music festivals cancelled in 2011

Predicted 'culling' at local level

40 major festivals sold tickets at less than face value(BBC Newsbeat, 2011b)

The future? (1)'Gadgetisation' will mean media-less digital formats will

increase their market share, distributors and physical retailers will suffer, aggregators and online retailers will prosper.

Music labels will need to continue to diversify their product portfolio in order to survive.

Online social media platforms will integrate wholly with online music distribution and retail (Amazon V Apple V Facebook V

Google)

The future of the British music industry will be more artist centered as more 'independents' emerge.

The future? (2)Live music will continue to grow in popularity and value,

but their will be consolidation of festivals.

Enforcement of the Digital Economy Act (2010), action against internet companies, and actual public

prosecution will be necessary to change not just hearts, but minds and the 'Robin Hood' mentality of

downloaders.

The MP3 is the beginning rather than the end of the 21st Century music industry.

References (1) BBC. (2011a) London riots: Enfield fire hits Machester's music scene. [Internet] BBC, London. Available at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-14541764>

BBC. (2011b) Jeremy Hunt urges web firms to join anti-piracy drive. [Internet] BBC, London. Available at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14916484>

BBC Newsbeat. (2011a) Traffic light plan for online music search results. [Internet] London, BBC. Available at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/14219733>

BBC Newsbeat. (2011b) Music festivals struggling due to overcrowded market. [Internet] London, BBC. Available at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/14446562>

British Phonographic Institute. (2010a) The market. [Internet] London, BPI. Available at: <https://bpi.co.uk/music-business/article/the-market.aspx>

References (2) British Phonographic Institute (2010b) Digital music nation 2010: The UK's legal and illegal digital music landscape. London, BPI.

Henderson, S. (2009) Audio-visual media. Pp. 112-132 in Moss, S. (Ed.) (2009) The entertainment industry : An introduction. Wallingford, CABI.

Hypebot. (2011) How much does a band earn from each music platform ? Uniform Notion shares the numbers. [Internet] Hypebot.com. Available at : <http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/09/how-much-does-a-band-earn-from-each-music-platform-uniform-notion-shares-the-numbers.html>

Mintel Group Limited. (2011) Music and video purchasing – August 2011. London, MINTEL.

Moss, S. and Henderson, S. (2009) Music. Pp.Pp.39-58 in Moss, S. (Ed.) (2009) The entertainment industry : An introduction. Wallingford, CABI.

References (3) Performing Right Society. (2010) UK music success abroad helps drive growth, as recorded sales flatten and the live boom cools. [Internet] London, PRS. Available from: <http://www.prsformusic.com/aboutus/press/latestpressreleases/Pages/PRSForMusicaddsuptheindustry.aspx>

UK Music. (2011) Music tourists contribute at least £864m a year to the UK economy. [Internet] London, UK Music. Available at: <http://www.ukmusic.org/news/post/147-music-tourists-contribute-at-least-864m-a-year-to-the-uk-economy>