Facts and Figures

Creative Industry Facts and Figures

£5.8bn – value of the music industry in 2019, an increase of 11% from the previous year. (*1)

£2.9bn – generated in export revenue by the UK music industry in 2019, an increase of 9% from the previous year (in comparison to £2bn value of fishing exports and £23bn value of food and drink exports as a whole in 2019) 

£86m of the total value of UK music exports was live music. 

£640.2m – value of music and performing arts to Europe in 2018 

£8.4m generated by the UK’s orchestras from touring in the EU in 2019, 58% of their total touring income and out of a total of £14.4m earned from foreign touring. 

44% of UK musicians earn up to half of their earnings in the European Union (*2)

43% of UK musicians travelled to the EU more than five times a year (compared to 39% in 2018) 

32% of UK musicians spend more than 30 days in the EU for work (compared to 41% in 2018) 

€4.68bn was the value of total EU28 recorded music market revenue 2017 

23.89% was the UK share of the total European recorded music market revenue in 2018. 

12.6m tourists every year attracted to the UK for gigs and festivals. 

£4.7bn spent by tourists every year attracted to the UK for gigs and festivals 

45,633 jobs were sustained by music tourism 

197,168 full-time jobs sustained by the music industry, providing 4 times as many jobs for people as the steel and fisheries industries combined 

142,000 of the total jobs are categorised as “music creators” – musicians, composers, producers, engineers 

£23,059 average annual earnings for musicians – over £6,000 less than the national average (£29,832) (Office of National Statistics). 

(*1) https://musiciansunion.org.uk/campaigns/musicians-working-in-the-eu

https://www.ukmusic.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Music-by-Numbers-2020.pdf

(*2) https://www.ism.org/news/ism-comments-touring-after-brexit-government-negotiations survey carried out with 629 respondents from a cross-section of the music workforce