Valerie supports UK Music ‘Wish You Were Here’ Reception

I attended the UK Music event hosted by Nigel Adams MP on the contribution of live music to the UK economy. I sang a Karaoke duet with my colleague Paula Sherriff MP.

Wish You Were Here studies the economic impact of live music and music tourism in the UK. Using raw ticketing data, they produced a report which breaks down live music activity in cities, in regions and across the whole county.

The West Midlands region generated £271 million from music tourism visits in 2015. This came from a total of 874,000 visitors which helped support 3,432 jobs in the local area. Cities and towns helping to attract music tourists within the West Midlands include Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Stoke and Warwick.

I also discussed the impact of copyright on the music industry and UK economy.

Accessing music via digital services is an area of growth for the music industry. The UK leads the way in the number of digital services available. However this growth is threatened as new services have to compete with websites that offer music illegally for free. 7 million people in the UK admit to visiting sites that offer illegal content.

There have been attempts by Government to improve the enforcement of copyright infringement, otherwise known as piracy, via measures such as the Digital Economy Act, which deals with peer-to-peer file sharing. Outside of legislation, the music industry is proactive in working with the advertising and payment sectors to ensure that providers of such services do not support illegal sites.