UK Music CEO talks Covid, Brexit and mental health

UK Music CEO Jamie Njoku-Goodwin has spoken to Headliner about overcoming the vast challenges that continue to be inflicted upon the music industry by Covid and Brexit, as well as the opportunities he sees for the sector further down the line.

It’s been almost a year since Njoku-Goodwin left the UK government, where he served as special advisor to former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and as a special advisor at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and he could scarcely have picked a more challenging time to join the music industry. At the time of his arrival, the UK music business was feeling the full force of the pandemic, particularly in the live sector, where a roadmap out of social distancing restrictions was yet to be formulated.

Meanwhile, the catastrophic implications of Brexit for artists continue to bubble away under the surface, threatening to spill over as soon as the possibility of international touring opens up.

So, less than 12 months into the role, how has Njoku-Goodwin been coping? Headliner finds out…

Thank you for joining us, Jamie. How have you found these early months in the job, at what must surely be the most challenging period in the history of the industry?

It is a hugely challenging time for the music industry. Leading up to the pandemic there were 200,000 people working in the industry; double-digit growth; increased employment; and all sorts of economic and social benefits across the country. Then suddenly the pandemic hits and almost overnight the industry is shut down. Coming into a role like this when the industry had been shut down and live music had been on hold for six months, it was my priority to get the industry back on its feet. Whether it’s publishers, songwriters, or people on the recording side, they all recognised that we are an ecosystem, and when one part of our industry is failing, the whole industry is failing. Then there is the issue of Brexit and touring in the EU… it really has felt like crisis management.

But there are many industries that entered the pandemic in precarious positions, whereas the music industry was one of the incredible success stories and was punching above its weight. The UK music industry should be one of the biggest success stories of the 2020s, that’s what makes all of this so devastating. So, the priority is to get us not only back onto our feet, but back onto that trajectory we were on before the pandemic.

What was it that led you from Westminster into this role?

I’ve always been a music lover. I was a music graduate at uni before I started working in politics. A lot of the time in government I found every excuse I could to focus on things in the culture and creative sector, but always with a real passion for the music side of things. Then this came up and it was my dream job, and dream industry. And looking at where the sector was at, I felt it was a job I could really bring something to. It was a time when a lot of what was happening in government was massively affecting our sector, so I though my experience and expertise would allow me to help the sector as much as I possibly could.

So your time in parliament had you well prepared for this role.

To an extent. When working in government you have a surface layer understanding of industries. Different industries often don’t appreciate that you’re never just engaged with one industry, you’re engaged with hundreds. In DCMS, you’re engaged with music, theatre, digital, tourism, and when you’re dealing with all those different industries you can have a few bullet points of understanding but you never really get under the skin of things. My job is to make sure that government understands why this is such an important sector for the UK - £5.8 billion per year, 200,000 jobs, £2.9 billion of exports etc. Making that argument to government is huge priority for UK Music.

How difficult has it been to make that argument to this government? It has been criticised heavily in some quarters for not doing enough to protect the sector during the pandemic.

One of the biggest challenges has been having industries in crisis at the same time. Normally in government, something would be happening in an industry and it would be at the top of the news and it’s just that sector. In a pandemic, the challenge you have is that it isn’t just one industry in crisis. On the government’s side they are hearing from dozens and dozens of industries all saying they are in crisis and need help.

The government is looking at economic recovery and looking at sectors that will bring back economic and social benefits to the country, and that’s where the music industry is right now. The sector has been decimated over the past year, but it will be able to help bring our country out of the difficulties we’ve faced over the last year, under the right conditions. Enabling our sector to fire on all cylinders isn’t just good for our industry, its good for the country, good for the tax payer and is an argument that has to be made clearly to the government.

How optimistic are you about live music returning to its pre-pandemic state?

In a pandemic you never know what’s going to happen. The vaccination rollout has been incredibly encouraging, and we should be able to proceed with more confidence than before. But you can never be completely certain while there is a pandemic on. So, we have to look at how we can put on shows as safely as possible. When I started this job I said we have two choices – we bury our heads in the sand and hope this blows over, or we make changes in order to do things safely and not give government a reason to shut us down. There have been numerous successful pilot events, which will allow us to demonstrate to how we can hold events safely without social distancing. The nightmare scenario for a lot of people is reopening and then shutting down again. Our approach is to put mitigations and protocols in place, which are about running events safely as opposed to being a binary on or off scenario. For us, with live music, it is a matter of ‘how’ not ‘if’.

Moving onto Brexit, what is the current situation with regards to making touring throughout the EU as viable as possible?

This is another example of somewhere that, as an industry, we were incredibly successful, and a leading light, but we’ve been massively affected over the past year. Pre-Brexit, European touring was absolutely vital for artists. One of the things we’ve been doing as an industry is engaging with every member state about what exactly the rules are for entry for musicians. In some places they’ll say if you’re coming for less than 90 days you don’t need a work permit, but in others, even if you’re just coming in for a night, you’ll be faced with hundreds of pounds in Visa costs. It’s a problem for touring musicians of any level, but it’s a particular problem for emerging artists.

Touring Europe was how a lot of artists broke into the industry, and its incredibly worrying to see a whole generation of artists’ chances sabotaged by the Brexit limitations. We’re doing what we can to make touring as friction-free as possible. We want to get as close as possible to the pre-Brexit conditions, but there are all sorts of new regulations that artists are coming up against. We’ve had lots of member states wanting to make sure their artists can tour reciprocally in the UK. At the moment it is lose-lose for both sides. There is no advantage for UK artists not being able to tour in Spain, and vice-versa. It’s a difficult situation.

Is it a salvageable situation?

It takes a lot of work on our part and the government’s, but it’s something we have to do. It’s largely gone from being an EU competency to being an issue for individual states. Now it is a matter of looking at the individual states and focusing all sorts of pressure on them to try and change their rules. It’s not going to be easy, but we have to do it. We have to focus pressure on the UK government to be doing the work on this side as well, of course.

A lot of the rules independent states have in place weren’t designed with musicians in mind. We are finding ourselves as an industry being caught on rules that weren’t necessarily meant for us. When people talk about short-term work, they are thinking of people coming into that country for a few months, maybe for haulage or something like that. They probably weren’t thinking about a touring musician that is only going to be staying for one or two nights and then moving on. When you make that case a number of countries recognise that, and a lot of them have exemptions for cultural purposes and people coming in for very, very short-term work. It’s about identifying where the problems are and as an industry and bringing our lobbying right to bear on those states to resolve the situation.

What do you see as some of the big opportunities for the music industry in the UK?

The past nine months have just been about dealing with the crises, and where we all want to get to is a place where we are that net contributor to the economy. One of the things I’m particularly interested in is the role music can play in helping mental health and wellbeing. There are huge opportunities here. There is all sorts of emerging evidence about the benefits music can have, and if you look at the past year, as we recover from the pandemic we are going to see big long-term impacts on education and people’s mental health. This pandemic has had a huge toll on people/s mental health and there is a huge role for the music industry to play in the national effort to help people out of this incredibly difficult time.