According to industry umbrella organisation UK Music ‘the UK is the third largest recorded music market in the world and one of only three net exporters of music globally’ (valued at £4bn in 2022). I’d like to get a sense of what this looks like at a regional level to understand better who currently benefits and to explore the potential for music sector growth in Sheffield and South Yorkshire.
Much has been said before about the tension, or even antagonism, between art and commerce. However, personally, I think this often amounts to the narcissism of minor differences. Entrepreneurs and artists have much in common, most interestingly perhaps in their attitude to risk. The work of both the artist and the entrepreneur embodies hope. Oriented instinctively toward the future, uncertainty is read by both as possibility. In this way, the unity of the artistic and entrepreneurial project has been a key source of cultural strength and a pillar of modern democratic civilisation.
I have started this newsletter to share my thoughts on the current state of the relationship between art, entrepreneurship, and audience experience in the independent music sector. I think common purpose between music makers, risk-taking intermediaries, and audiences for music plays a role in the health of our communal life and the success of our society. My goal is to contribute to a revitalisation of this partnership in the UK, primarily in my own region of South Yorkshire.
I’d like to see the music sector contribute in a purposeful way to good growth in our region through innovation and collaboration. I’d like to see a greater number of better quality jobs available in the regional music sector. I believe that music activity can generate social and economic benefit – contributing to placemaking and across a range of key policy indicators – and that, in many cases, it can do this in a largely self-sustaining way (though public funding for shared infrastructure and education is prerequisite).
Those of us exploring music production at a regional level should be sensitive to the unreliability of the following superficial binaries:
Consumption vs Production
All main stakeholder groups – artists, entrepreneurs and audiences – must consume in order to produce and the participation of all three is necessary for cultural activity to thrive. Music culture is not, in my view, something done by one group to another, it emerges from a set of arrangements and resources at a local level where the role of each stakeholder group shares much with the others.
At the level of the individual, if I attend a concert I find it quite easy to switch my mode of attention according to an audience, artist, or music industry role. Some distinctive ideas and feelings are associated with each, but there is a good deal of overlap. This experience is commonplace in grassroots music, where participants routinely wear multiple hats. A DIY artist is likely to be simultaneously a fan, an artist, and an entrepreneur.
At an organisational level, my business, Hudson Records, consumes a variety of goods and services in order to produce other goods and services. This is then true of our artists, typically sustainable businesses in their own right, and of our audience, which generates a host of music-related content to be consumed by others, generating additional revenue.
Local vs Global
As with other areas of social and economic life, arrangements at a local level are profoundly affected by national, and international events, policies, and processes. Music activity in South Yorkshire is fully integrated into the global economy via the operations of the entertainment and technology sectors, the legal system etc. Any of the key stakeholders in South Yorkshire music might therefore be non-local. A Rotherham-based artist might stream a performance via a service offered by a Californian tech company to a potentially global online audience, many of whom may in fact be in the UK, or even in South Yorkshire. A Japanese DJ touring the UK might perform at a grassroots venue in Doncaster to a local audience. Music content is created or shared by South Yorkshire residents on social media. And so on.
Art vs Commerce
The potential benefits of music activity are various and might be categorised as cultural, social, and economic. This means that collaborators may each have quite different motives for contributing to any music activity. A project or organisation might be designed to align the interests of the artist trying to generate income, the audience member seeking a sense of community, and the entrepreneur or business driven by a commitment to art and culture (for instance a football club with a PRS licence that explicitly plays recordings by local emerging artists at half-time). Oftentimes, some of those designated as producers in a snapshot of a local music sector (independent artists, record producers etc) are neither financially motivated, nor economically productive in a direct sense. However, in order to produce they must consume and this value is therefore captured within other business models.
The more time one spends looking at all of this the more the complexity of it all becomes apparent, amplified further with consideration of voluntary, educational, and funded arts organisations. Hence the notion of an ‘ecosystem’ for music is evoked to try to encapsulate in summary the great variety of entities, processes, relationships and experiences involved, and the importance of this variety for the viability of the system as a whole. However, as the economist Mariana Mazzucato points out, this conceptualisation does not absolve us of the responsibility to try to understand the precise dynamics that may obtain in any particular circumstance. Ecosystems can be symbiotic or mutualistic, parasitic or predator-prey, and the difference is consequential.
If we could establish what proportion of the goods and services consumed through music activity in South Yorkshire is provided by our local industries we might better understand the extent to which the economic value generated here is retained for the region in the form of jobs and growth, and what proportion is driving jobs and growth elsewhere. We might then aim to retain a greater proportion, for instance through business support. This may be particularly targeted to drive export potential. Innovation need not only increase our share of the pie, of course, but might also grow the pie.
I am currently working with Amelia Garrett to develop and test a method for exploring organisational structure, business models, and networks within different sectors of the Sheffield music industry.
Ultimately, we’d like to be able to answer the following questions:
- What are key drivers or determinants of productivity in the Sheffield music sector? Do organisations that are making the largest economic contribution share common features (e.g. type, size, location, business model)?
- What are the interactions across the music sector value chain and what are the relative importance of parts of the value chain to growth and sector resilience?
I look forward to sharing more as the work progresses.
A Coat Worth Wearing 
Investigating music production in a regional music sector
According to industry umbrella organisation UK Music ‘the UK is the third largest recorded music market in the world and one of only three net exporters of music globally’ (valued at £4bn in 2022). I’d like to get a sense of what this looks like at a regional level to understand better who currently benefits and to explore the potential for music sector growth in Sheffield and South Yorkshire.
Much has been said before about the tension, or even antagonism, between art and commerce. However, personally, I think this often amounts to the narcissism of minor differences. Entrepreneurs and artists have much in common, most interestingly perhaps in their attitude to risk. The work of both the artist and the entrepreneur embodies hope. Oriented instinctively toward the future, uncertainty is read by both as possibility. In this way, the unity of the artistic and entrepreneurial project has been a key source of cultural strength and a pillar of modern democratic civilisation.
I have started this newsletter to share my thoughts on the current state of the relationship between art, entrepreneurship, and audience experience in the independent music sector. I think common purpose between music makers, risk-taking intermediaries, and audiences for music plays a role in the health of our communal life and the success of our society. My goal is to contribute to a revitalisation of this partnership in the UK, primarily in my own region of South Yorkshire.
I’d like to see the music sector contribute in a purposeful way to good growth in our region through innovation and collaboration. I’d like to see a greater number of better quality jobs available in the regional music sector. I believe that music activity can generate social and economic benefit – contributing to placemaking and across a range of key policy indicators – and that, in many cases, it can do this in a largely self-sustaining way (though public funding for shared infrastructure and education is prerequisite).
Those of us exploring music production at a regional level should be sensitive to the unreliability of the following superficial binaries:
Consumption vs Production
All main stakeholder groups – artists, entrepreneurs and audiences – must consume in order to produce and the participation of all three is necessary for cultural activity to thrive. Music culture is not, in my view, something done by one group to another, it emerges from a set of arrangements and resources at a local level where the role of each stakeholder group shares much with the others.
At the level of the individual, if I attend a concert I find it quite easy to switch my mode of attention according to an audience, artist, or music industry role. Some distinctive ideas and feelings are associated with each, but there is a good deal of overlap. This experience is commonplace in grassroots music, where participants routinely wear multiple hats. A DIY artist is likely to be simultaneously a fan, an artist, and an entrepreneur.
At an organisational level, my business, Hudson Records, consumes a variety of goods and services in order to produce other goods and services. This is then true of our artists, typically sustainable businesses in their own right, and of our audience, which generates a host of music-related content to be consumed by others, generating additional revenue.
Local vs Global
As with other areas of social and economic life, arrangements at a local level are profoundly affected by national, and international events, policies, and processes. Music activity in South Yorkshire is fully integrated into the global economy via the operations of the entertainment and technology sectors, the legal system etc. Any of the key stakeholders in South Yorkshire music might therefore be non-local. A Rotherham-based artist might stream a performance via a service offered by a Californian tech company to a potentially global online audience, many of whom may in fact be in the UK, or even in South Yorkshire. A Japanese DJ touring the UK might perform at a grassroots venue in Doncaster to a local audience. Music content is created or shared by South Yorkshire residents on social media. And so on.
Art vs Commerce
The potential benefits of music activity are various and might be categorised as cultural, social, and economic. This means that collaborators may each have quite different motives for contributing to any music activity. A project or organisation might be designed to align the interests of the artist trying to generate income, the audience member seeking a sense of community, and the entrepreneur or business driven by a commitment to art and culture (for instance a football club with a PRS licence that explicitly plays recordings by local emerging artists at half-time). Oftentimes, some of those designated as producers in a snapshot of a local music sector (independent artists, record producers etc) are neither financially motivated, nor economically productive in a direct sense. However, in order to produce they must consume and this value is therefore captured within other business models.
The more time one spends looking at all of this the more the complexity of it all becomes apparent, amplified further with consideration of voluntary, educational, and funded arts organisations. Hence the notion of an ‘ecosystem’ for music is evoked to try to encapsulate in summary the great variety of entities, processes, relationships and experiences involved, and the importance of this variety for the viability of the system as a whole. However, as the economist Mariana Mazzucato points out, this conceptualisation does not absolve us of the responsibility to try to understand the precise dynamics that may obtain in any particular circumstance. Ecosystems can be symbiotic or mutualistic, parasitic or predator-prey, and the difference is consequential.
If we could establish what proportion of the goods and services consumed through music activity in South Yorkshire is provided by our local industries we might better understand the extent to which the economic value generated here is retained for the region in the form of jobs and growth, and what proportion is driving jobs and growth elsewhere. We might then aim to retain a greater proportion, for instance through business support. This may be particularly targeted to drive export potential. Innovation need not only increase our share of the pie, of course, but might also grow the pie.
I am currently working with Amelia Garrett to develop and test a method for exploring organisational structure, business models, and networks within different sectors of the Sheffield music industry.
Ultimately, we’d like to be able to answer the following questions:
I look forward to sharing more as the work progresses.
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