The overall value of Finnish music industry amounted to 890 million euro in 2021. The value bounced back with 15 per cent from the first covid year, 2020, as record sales and public funding grew, and live music started to take first steps into recovery.
The coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic halted live music performances in March 2020, and restrictions continued until early 2022. Accordingly, the economic value of live music collapsed, which also impacted other sectors. There were severe income losses for artists and musicians, copyright and royalties, as well as many companies and freelancers in the event industry.
In 2021, the value of live music sector was 314 million euro. Within live music, the private live music sector amounted to only about a third from the pre-pandemic value in 2021 (now 110 million euro) though the publicly funded institutions were able to maintain and recover more of their operation.
Copyright royalties grew by 7 per cent in 2021. However, the real growth was seen in the retail sales of recordings and the sector grew by 18 per cent in the second year of the pandemic. The digital consumption amounts to 90 per cent of the record sales.
The role of government issued grants and subsidies was exceptionally high in 2021. Together with the contribution of private foundations, the amount of grants and subsidies was now 109 million euro, up 75 per cent from the previous year.
In addition, the overall value includes an estimate of the value of music education, 270 million euro.
The overall value of the Finnish music industry is based mainly on reports published by umbrella organizations in the industry. However, in order to make the sector values comparable with each other, some revenue streams have been converted into consumer values, that is, prices paid by consumers for live music events or recordings, and fees paid by music users as royalties, including VAT where relevant.
The payments from one industry sector to another, for example the copyright royalties of live music, are included in both sectors but the double counting is subtracted from the overall value.
Live music is divided into two categories: the private sector and the public sector. The live music private sector (110 million euro in 2021) includes clubs, stage performances, concerts, festivals and other events among others, and was estimated on the basis of copyright royalties collected by Teosto. These are approximately 3.5 percent of the overall ticket sales, which in turn constitutes about 70 percent of the overall turnover of live music events. The public sector amounts to 204 million euro (2021) and includes symphony orchestras, opera and ballet, military music and church music.
Value of the recorded music industry is based on the statistics of wholesale value (68 million euro in 2021), provided by Musiikkituottajat – IFPI Finland. This value is added by the retail sales margin and VAT, estimated at 161 percent of the wholesale value.
The copyright revenues are collected by Finnish Composers’ Copyright Society Teosto (70 million euro in 2021) and Gramex – The copyright society of performing artists and producers of phonograms in Finland (24 million euro in 2021). These collections are then disbursed to the rights holders of musical works and recordings. In addition, the overall copyright revenues include the direct licensing and sheet music sales by the Finnish Music Publishers Association (5.3 million euro in 2021). The payments within the sector have been subtracted from the sector value.
Private foundations (including the Finnish Music Foundation) together with the public sector organizations (Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the ministry of Education and Culture), give out grants and subsidies for the music professionals and music organizations. In addition, the municipal sector has a role in subsidizing the local professional music field.
The value of music education has been estimated by Aku Alanen from Statistics Finland. The value is not updated yearly.