Received from: MU
Merged into composite 03
The UK music industry – which is worth £5.2bn to the economy and enriches all of our lives – is on its knees.
The legacy of piracy, which badly damaged the recorded music industry, has now been compounded by the Covid-19 crisis, which has decimated the live music scene. The MU’s 32,000 members have lost most of their work and, unlike most other sectors, are still not able to return to live gigs. It will be well into 2021 before most musicians return to anything like normality.
Almost 40 per cent of our members have not been eligible for either the furlough scheme or the SEISS and so have been reliant on the pittance of universal credit or small handouts from hardship funds.
The government has responded by ploughing £1.57bn into the cultural sector, but the majority of this money is going to the companies and organisations themselves – not to the workers.
The MU calls on the TUC to:
i. lobby the government to bring in a sector-specific support package to allow musicians and performers to survive this lengthy period of unemployment
ii. campaign to highlight the fragility of the music sector in the UK.
Musicians’ Union