UK live music out-earned recorded music in 2008
Live music was worth more in the UK last year than recorded music, according to figures calculated by Will Page, Chief Economist at PRS for Music. He announced his calculations at the International Live Music Conference on Saturday.
Readers of the Music Ally Report may well remember a guest article ‘Is The Future Live?’ in issue 181, in November 2007, when Page posed the question of when the revenues generated by the live music sector would overtake that of recorded.
At ILMC this weekend, Page announced that the “changing of the guard” has now taken place. Scaling up PRS tariff data, and factoring in VAT and a Booking Fee, he’s calculated live to be worth a record £904m in 2008. That overtakes the BPI trade value of the music business of £896m, published in their January newsletter.
Factor in secondary ticket and ancillary revenues, estimated by Tixdaq, and consumer spend on live reaches £1,279m. That tops the estimated retail value of recorded music of £1,240m.
Whilst both sets of numbers have caveats – with sponsorship left out of live and digital licensing left out of recorded for example – the gap is expected to widen going forward, as this chart from Page shows (on right – click to expand size).
On the same ILMC panel, Stuart Galbraith of Kilimanjaro Live mentioned that Jackson has sold 800,000 tickets, all major festivals had sold out and Take That look set to show seven figure ticket sales. He contrasted this with the biggest recorded music release of the year so far, U2’s No Line On The Horizon, which he said has not produce a comparable level of demand so far.
Further research from Will Page can be accessed through www.prsformusic.com/economics
March 16th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
The BBC had an article regarding the ‘changing of the guard’ in gig royalites and CD income in October 2008. They also cited the PRS/MCPS as they were then.
I suppose, the extension of that change into live music revenue in general is no real surprise.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7684409.stm
March 16th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Thanks Joe for pointing that out. The new figures relate to consumer spending rather than royalties, but you’re absolutely right about this being an extension of a prediction Will made last year.