Over 6 months ago, I decided to see how true the proposition that Creative Industries are foreign exchange earners for the economy as claimed by British Music and the Shadow Culture team. I asked my MP to ask a written question and the replies are linked to in a comment on the above article. I asked for a broader range of industry classifications as I was interested in broader questions than just the creative industry.
I think this is validly constructed.
EMI was sold to Sony & Universal in 2012 and so their balance of trade position was reversed at that time and they were a competitively large music publisher at the time. I last looked at the structure of the global music industry a long time ago, pre-streaming, pre-Apple and pre-Spotify (which is incorporated in Sweden).
Five years out of nine, the industry was in deficit. The final year surplus is extraordinarily large, it would be good to see 2017/2018 and/or understand the reasons for this number. It is not historically true to say that the Creative industries are a net contributor to the foreign exchange account.
I should add that the aggregate trade current account deficit is run as at about minus £2.5bn /month over the period in question.
ooOOOoo
I wrote about this last year, I have corrected a spelling mistake in the title, and so the SURL/permalink is now, https://wp.me/p9J8FV-1Nb …