20.12.2024: As the end of the year approaches, our team at UK Music has taken a look back at our work in 2024 to champion and support the UK’s world-leading music industry. 

It’s been a year of major change in the worlds of both politics and music.  We saw the arrival of a new Labour government in July after 14 years of Conservative and coalition-led administrations, while music across the UK has faced challenges on a number of fronts.

The increasing impact of Artificial Intelligence on the UK music industry, coupled with the ongoing threats to our grassroots venues and emerging artists, as well as the continuing barriers to touring the EU and the decline in music education all threaten the success of our world-leading sector.

As UK Music, the collective voice of our £7.6 billion sector, it’s our job to work with our members to represent every part of our fantastic industry – bringing them to collaborate, campaign, and champion music.

So, we have outlined below just some of the work we have done over the past twelve months to help grow the UK music industry both home and abroad.

Political Engagement: 

Ahead of the 2024 July General Election, we continued to press politicians from across the political divide to support all the recommendations in our Music Manifesto – drawn up with the support of all our UK Music members – which enshrines what we believe is needed to help our sector continue to grow and create thousands of rewarding jobs every year.   You can read the document more about the manifesto here.

[Above: UK Music Chief Executive Tom Kiehl talks to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy about the importance of the UK music industry]

Following his appointment in June 2024, our new Chief Executive Tom Kiehl was one of the first industry leaders to meet new Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.  You can read more about what they discussed here. Over the first six months of the new government, he and the UK Music team have continued to meet ministers, MPs and Peers from all sides to press the case for our sector.

In addition to ministerial meetings one of the key ways that Tom and the team engage with politicians is through the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Music, for which UK Music provides the secretariat.  Until the 2024 General Election when he stood down from Parliament, the group was led brilliantly by former Minister and Labour MP Kevin Brennan. It is now led by co-chairs Labour MP Alex Sobel and SNP MP Pete Wishart.

We  also threw our biggest summer party yet overlooking the River Thames and Westminster, bringing together music industry leaders, politicians and stakeholders from across the sector to network and celebrate and hear a rousing speech about the importance of the sector from Creative Industries Minister Sir Chris Bryant.

Since polling day, we have added 23 new MP members and four new Peers to the APPG for Music. These new members are from Labour, Conservative,  Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru. Our current membership number of 109 is a 35% increase from the 81 members we had directly after the election.

In May, the APPG published a report that called for fresh legislation to support the UK music industry and music fans by regulating artificial intelligence (AI) amid mounting concern about the impact of AI.

Those fears were reflected in an exclusive UK Music poll of more than 2,000 people who were asked for their views on issues ranging from the use of creators’ work by AI firms to deepfake images of artists like Dua Lipa and Taylor Swift.

The key findings of the poll conducted by Whitestone Insight for UK Music were:

• An overwhelming four out of five people (83%) agree that if AI has been used to generate a song it must be clearly labelled.
• 77% agree AI-generated music that fails to acknowledge the creator of the original music amounts to theft.
• Four out of five people (80%) agree the law should stop an artist’s music being used to train an AI application without their knowledge or permission. 

We travelled to all the major political party conferences in the autumn as part of our drive to get our messages across to political leaders.  You can read about our fantastic panel events at the Labour conference, Conservative conference and Liberal Democrat conference. 

We sprinkled some stardust over the Labour conference by bringing along Will Young to delight delegates in Liverpool, while Peter Andre performed for a packed audience at our event for the Conservatives in Birmingham.

[Above: Will Young adds some star talent to our UK Music event at Labour’s 2024 conference in Liverpool to showcase the UK music industry]

UK Music Industry In Numbers: 

In July, we unveiled new research into the value of gigs, concerts and festivals to local economies.

A total of 19.2 million music fans travelled from UK towns and cities and overseas in 2023 to see UK shows from the likes of Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Harry Styles and Blur, and festivals like Glastonbury, Boomtown and TRNSMT.

Our UK Music research revealed:

• Total number of music tourists attending live music events across the UK in 2023 was 19.2 million – an increase of 33% on 2022 when the figure was 14.4 million.
• Total music tourism spending in 2023 was £8 billion – an increase of 21% on 2022 when the figure was £6.6 billion.
• Total employment sustained by music tourism in 2023 was 62,000, which is an increase of 17% on 2022 when the figure was 53,000.
• Total number of foreign music tourists in 2023 was 1.014 million, which is a slight drop from 1.053 million in 2022.
• Total number of domestic music tourists in 2023 was 18.2 million, which is an increase of 36% on 2022 when the total was 13.3 million.

[Above: Arlo Parks at Green Man Festival in Wales]

In November, we released our annual economic report, This Is Music 2024. The report outlined the huge economic contribution the UK music industry makes to the economy.

It was a stellar year for live music with artists such as Beyoncé, Burna Boy, Harry Styles, Blur, and Pink, Elton John and Ed Sheeran all playing big UK shows, while there were also standout performances in 2023 from emerging acts like The Last Dinner Party and English Teacher.

Exports received a further boost from international touring by British artists in 2023, including Harry Styles, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Blur, Def Leppard, Sam Fender, and Arctic Monkeys, while Adele continued her 2023 residency at Caesars Palace Las Vegas.

The key headline statistics in UK Music’s 2024 This Is Music report were:

• UK music’s contribution to the UK economy in 2023 hit a record £7.6 billion in terms of Gross Value Added (GVA) – up 13% from £6.7 billion in 2022.
• UK music exports revenue in 2023 hit a new high of £4.6 billion – up 15% from £4 billion in 2022.
• Total UK music industry employment in 2023 hit a record 216,000 (full-time equivalent posts) – up 3% from 210,000 in 2022. 

We secured widespread media coverage for the report including by BBC News, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Express, The Times, The Sun, Music Week, Billboard and many more news brands.   You can read a summary of the report’s findings here.

We also used the report to highlight four key areas where urgent action was needed to help the UK’s music sector grow in an increasingly competitive global market:

1. Promote changes to the law that safeguard against unregulated AI, and reject proposals that fail to achieve this.
2. Ensure every child and young person across the UK has access to free music making.
3. Introduce a cap on secondary ticket resale prices.
4. Fight for visa-free touring for musicians and crew.

Diversity and Inclusion:

In June, we unveiled the findings of our Workforce Diversity Survey in our 2024 Diversity Report, which gave a snapshot of those working behind the scenes in the UK music industry. The results show significant improvements in the areas of gender and ethnicity. However, the findings also highlight areas where more progress is needed.

The survey has focused on the music industry workforce and not the creator community since its inception in 2016, because it was felt that this was a less visible but important area that was not being monitored.  You can read more about our 2024 Diversity Report and see all the details here. 

 Ahead of its scheduled publication in 2025, we also launched a survey to scope the economic impact of Black music artists, creators and industry professionals.   The survey was initiated by UK Music Diversity Taskforce and taken forward by UK Music.  You can read more about the survey and the upcoming report here.

We continued to support the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority (CIISA), which will uphold and improve standards of behaviour in the creative industries by tackling all forms of bullying and harassment.

We also carried on working with our UK Music Diversity Taskforce, which advises us on issues relating to equity, diversity and inclusion.

In May, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Music met (see image below) to discuss the historical and ongoing challenges faced by Black artists and fans.

Makeda Bennett-Amparbeng, a campaigner and founder of SDS Entertainment, presented to the MPs, explaining how the new voluntary partnership approach mirrors Form 696 in all but name. 

[Above: The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Music meets at Westminster to discuss the historical and ongoing challenges faced by Black artists and fans.]

Touring the EU: 

We continued our efforts to press the Government to remove the barriers facing musicians and crew touring the EU post-Brexit.  The ongoing challenges include rising costs, extra red tape and restrictions on travel and transporting equipment.  They are summarised in this piece by Tom Kiehl for The Guardian in December which you can read here.

Music Education and Skills:

UK Music continue to inspire the next generation of the music industry and worked with artist Dilettante, Discover Creative Careers, YouTube and others to create a film showing the various people behind the scenes working with an artist to put on a gig. 

We ran music industry career insight talks including two 3-day online sessions with Speakers for Schools for pupils from across the UK.

We also attended and supported a number of Careers Days and Conferences including Liverpool Philharmonic Careers, Leeds Creative Careers, BIY People & Talent Prove Your Passion, the first ever Leicester Music Conference, Launchpad in Leeds, Breaking into Music in Belfast, Sonic Herts, Beyond the Music in Manchester, Production Futures and many more.

We campaigned on various issues including around the proposed changes to level 3 qualifications – hosting a panel on this subject at the Music & Drama Expo in February with experts from our Music Academic Partnership (MAP) network. We also submitted consultation responses including to the curriculum review.

We partnered with globalbridge to create a short series of career films and launched an updated version of the Music Education Directory. And, we supported 100 free entries for those facing barriers to entry for the Song Academy’s Young Songwriter Competition.

Our network the Music Academic Partnership (MAP) had a busy year too, including various social events such as our Summer Party, the AIM Awards, Buckingham Palace Creative Industries Tea Party, and top industry meetings such as with Peter Leathem CEO of PPL to discuss industry’s support for the talent pipeline.  

The MAP Tour was a huge success with multiple events across the UK. This culminated with our Outstanding MAP Graduate Awards (OMGs) held in partnership with Sound City with artist Låpsley presenting the awards.

We also saw success in innovative research bid terms too as a key partner with MAP member University of Liverpool on their Liverpool Creative Hub AHRC project securing £6.75million.

In wider industry working we have also been very active. We worked together with other Creative Industries Council (CIC) members to develop and fund a creative industries wide Skills Audit in 2025.

We have fed into a range of industry groupings including Metadata Education Group, CIC Education & Skills Working Group, Discover Creative Careers Steering Group, CIC Technical Education Pathways Sub-Group, and Creative Advisory Group.

UK Music worked with other CIC members and the project team to further develop Discover Creative Careers that secured £3million in the Government’s Autumn Budget.

We supported the continued development of apprenticeships in music and have made great progress with both a Music Business Coordinator role as well as a Music Instrument Repair & Maintenance Technician role.

UK Music Futures Board:

The UK Music Futures Board continues to bring together inspiring young talent from across the industry to meet and discuss key issues facing the sector. Music Week published a series of articles from members of the Board over the summer. You can read those here, here and here.

Looking to the Future: 

As we look forward to 2025, we will continue to strive to do the best we can for everyone who works in the UK music industry and ensure it remains the envy of the world.