As recently as early last year, the music industry was just getting on with its thing. Artists, bands and orchestras were performing, touring and recording, while casually adding £2.9bn to the UK economy in 2019, an impressive 9 per cent up on the previous year. The prospect of leaving the European Union was looming but there was talk of a deal and musicians are always flagged up as such an important part of our heritage, envied throughout the world. Surely the politicians negotiating the deal wouldn’t sell us out.
Without visa-free tours of Europe, it will be economically impossible for many artists starting out. The music industry added £2.9B to the UK economy in 2019. Whilst the global pandemic brought the music industry to a halt in 2020, the implementation of Brexit on 1st January 2021 has only made the situation worse. Previously, artists from the UK could tour in 27 other European countries under the same rules as at home, but now it turns out that the UK rejected an offer of visa-free tours by musicians to EU countries. It's more than just getting a work visa, for tax reasons, every single piece of merchandise will have to be accounted for at every border crossing.
A 'standard' proposal to exempt performers from the huge cost and bureaucracy for 90 days was turned down because the government is insisting on denying that to EU artists visiting this country. From this month, UK musicians must, like non-EU artists, apply for visas - to visit for more than 30 days - as well as providing proof of savings and a sponsorship certificate from an event organiser.
Bigger artists who can put on stadium shows, like Billie Eilish, will survive, but anyone below that level will struggle to keep their head above the water.
If the government withdraws their support, the live music industry could face losing 170,000 jobs. The live music industry contributed £4.5b to the UK economy in 2019
It found that revenue for the live music sector had plummeted to almost zero since March, while the drop of 81 per cent compared to 2019 is four times the national average.
Live music isn't the only area facing the effects of the Coronavirus, studios are being forced to close as well which caused a halt in the music industry in general.
For the first time in 89 years, the solid oak doors of Abbey Road Studios have closed. The Beatles made it famous in the 1960s. Kate Bush, Sting, Blur, Radiohead, Amy Winehouse, Adele and Ed Sheeran have all recorded there. But today the studio website informs all comers that: “In line with the strict measures introduced by the UK Government to limit the spread of Covid-19, the Studios are now closed for at least three weeks, with just our security team remaining in place.” And with Abbey Road’s technical wizards all in lockdown, even the studio’s online mixing and mastering services are no longer available.
A lot of artists have found the lockdown difficult but helpful for their creativeness and have written a lot or used the time to figure out how to produce their own music, or record it to send to a producer. Other people and groups have combatted the situation by having socially distanced rehearsals. In Canada, the Luminous Voices professional choir bring their cars to an empty parking lot and sing whilst hearing other voices through their car radio.
Newman's method uses a few simple tools — microphones, a mixer and an FM transmitter.
More than 155m albums were bought or streamed in 2020, an increase of 8.2%, according to record label body the BPI.
According to the
BPI, Billie's album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was the fourth best selling album of 2020.
Dua Lipa, who released the second best album of 2020, Future Nostalgia, believes that women have to work much harder than men and constantly prove themselves to be taken seriously.
“You’re on a music video and the director goes, ‘I definitely think you need to wear a skirt’ – because someone wants to see, you know, ‘UK’s pop star in a cute outfit’,” Lipa said.
“I’m like, ‘Well, I’m going to wear trousers because it’s f***ing freezing.’ I know how to stand my ground and hold it down.”
In 2014, Kesha sued songwriter/producer Dr Luke for 'sexually, physically and verbally abusing her to the point where she nearly lost her life' which shone a light on the extreme exploitation in the music industry.
The producer countersued her for defamation, denying her claims strenuously. But when a court ruled Kesha had to remain in her contract with Dr Luke earlier this year, the hashtag #FreeKesha began trending on Twitter and fellow female musicians including Lady Gaga, Lily Allen, Kelly Clarkson and Lorde publicly offered her their support, only serving to underline their empathy with her. Taylor Swift donated $250,000 (£198,000) ‘to help with any of her financial needs’, while Adele dedicated her Brit Award for Best Female Solo Artist to her, acknowledging the problems faced by so many female stars by thanking her own record label ‘for embracing the fact that I’m a woman’. The overwhelming outpouring of solidarity for Kesha suggested that her allegations had struck a deep chord with women in the music industry who had up until this point remained tight-lipped. This was confirmed by Lady Gaga, who revealed she had been sexually assaulted by an unnamed producer when she was 19.
Women are representing less than one-third of all performers and 12.5% of songwriters across 800 songs, with women accounting for 2.6% of producers across 500 songs in January 2020. The Musicians' Union survey showed that almost half of their 31,000 members have faced harassment at work.
BIG 3
WHO ARE THE BIG 3?
There are 3 major music groups, known as the big 3, which are dominating in the industry currently, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
The Association of Independent Music (AIM) defines a 'major' as "a multinational company which (together with the companies in its group) has more than 5% of the world market(s) for the sale of records or music videos." In 2014, AIM estimated that the majors had a collective global market share of some 65–70%.
Before 2012, there were 4 major music groups, which included Electronic and Music Industries (EMI). In 2012 & 2013, the major divisions of EMI were sold off separately. Most of EMI's recorded music division was absorbed into UMG. EMI Music Publishing was absorbed into Sony/ATV Music Publishing. EMI's Parlophone and Virgin Classics labels were absorbed into Warner Music Group.
In 2019, Universal Music Group had the US and Canada market share of 54.5%, Sony Music Entertainment had 23.4% and Warner Music Group had 12.1%.
HOW MUCH DO THEY EARN A DAY?
In 2019, the big 3 music groups made $19m a day from streaming. In 2018, the big 3 music groups earned a combined total of $6.93b from streaming services, which was $1.6b more than what they earned the year before. This was the first significant resurgence in the music industry in two decades.
As the influence of streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music continues to grow, the domination of physical music sales has been erased in tandem. All three major record companies saw multimillion-dollar declines in sales of physical formats like CDs and cassettes in 2018 — with Sony, which has a suite of artists like Adele who outperform in physical sales, losing as much as a quarter-billion dollars in that category. Vinyl sales continued to be an outlier in the streaming-is-quashing-physical-records narrative, but their numbers were too small to offset the broader physical losses.
WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?
Indie labels are the more minor music groups in the industry. Although they are often discarded, the indie labels have a combined larger market share than Universal.
The indie labels have a combined larger market share as Universal. We don’t have full 2018 numbers yet, but in 2016, the indies had a market share 1.6% higher than Universal. In 2017, that had shrunk to .1%. Still, the independent labels, as a group, are powerful. We tend to forget about them when talking about the Big 3.
Although less common, artists can still become big through being independent or signing to an indie label. Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas, self-distributed their first song together, Ocean Eyes on the famous streaming platform SoundCloud. This became a massive hit, and Billie has since signed to one of the big three conglomerates, Universal Music Group's subsidiary, Interscope Records. Arctic Monkeys had a similar start to their career, with using the internet as their distributor, which helped them gain recognition without the help of a label.
BBFC AGE RATINGS
The
BBFC is an
independent,
private,
not-for-profit company which
classifies films, video on all physical formats (DVD and Blu-ray Disc for example) and certain video games, advertisements and trailers. Since 2015, it also
classifies, on a best practice voluntary basis, video content for
distribution online, like
music videos on YouTube and VEVO. The
Big 3 and other UK
independent labels have signed up for the
BBFC classifications, however only the
music videos produced in the UK will be
classified, so international artists won't come under the same agreement. In 2015, out of the 132 videos submitted to the
BBFC, 56 were rated 12 and 53 were
classified 15. They are under no obligation to submit them to be rated.
With convergence and digitisation making everything accessible with the touch of a few buttons, these ratings are easy to get by, like most things on the internet, but the BBFC aren't trying to hide these videos from children, but make the rating known for parent's, so they can decide whether they will let their child view it. In 2015, the BBFC published research into public attitudes toward online age rating labels for music videos. These were the results:
- 70% of parents of under 12s are concerned about their children being exposed to inappropriate content in music videos.
- Up to 60% of children say they have seen content in online music videos of which their parents would disapprove.
- 78% of parents value age ratings for online music videos.
- Given the choice, 86% of parents would encourage/ensure their children watch online channels with clear age ratings.
- 75% of parents would like online channels to link music video age ratings to parental controls.
The age ratings were found in the description of the music videos on YouTube, however I can't seem to find them. The only one that appeared to have a rating was the Dizzee Rascal music video, Couple of Stacks, where you can only watch it if you have a YouTube account which states you're over 18.
Dizzee Rascal - Couple of Stacks The video for Dizzee Rascal's last single was graphic enough to earn an 18 rating. The BBFC cited the video's "strong bloody violence, gore [and] very strong language" in its ruling.
And for fans of music videos, the good news is that the move looks unlikely to curb creativity and fetter artistic freedom. “I don’t think [age rating] in anyway restricts creativity,” argues Hackett. “What is bad about making someone aware that the content of something their child is about to watch might not be appropriate? It allows them to make decisions as a parent, giving the viewing public more information.”
