Turn It Up: What the Government's New Music Strategy Means for the Future of UK Music
A welcome shift in policy thinking — and where it must go further
By Jo Cox-Brown
The publication of Turn It Up: Our Plan for Music marks one of the most significant interventions in UK music policy for over a decade.
Developed jointly by Government and industry, the strategy sets out an ambitious vision to make the UK "the best place in the world to create, experience and invest in music." It covers everything from music education and grassroots venues to international touring, copyright, artificial intelligence, exports, audience development and workforce diversity.
More importantly, it signals a welcome shift in the way Government is thinking about music. Rather than viewing it solely as a cultural asset worthy of protection, Turn It Up recognises music as a driver of economic growth, innovation, investment and international influence.
That shift in thinking is long overdue.
For many years, those of us working across culture, placemaking and the evening and night-time economy have argued that music is far more than entertainment. It is infrastructure, education, business, community, soft power, placemaking and economic development. It attracts visitors, creates employment, supports hospitality, animates public spaces, strengthens local identity and contributes billions of pounds to the UK economy. Yet despite its importance, music policy has often been fragmented, reactive and developed in response to individual crises rather than through a coherent long-term vision.
Turn It Up attempts to change that.
Whether it ultimately succeeds will depend not on the quality of the strategy itself, but on its implementation. Before considering whether it can achieve that, it is worth looking at where this strategy sits within the wider history of music policy in the UK — because Turn It Up did not emerge in isolation.
The central tension
The
vision.
Hard to fault
Turn It Up sets out a comprehensive, joined-up vision for UK music — spanning education, exports, technology, copyright and workforce diversity. On paper, it is the most complete music strategy Government has produced in a generation.
The
delivery.
Yet to be proven
Delivering it will require real coordination across Whitehall and beyond — something few national strategies ever achieve.
A brief history of music policy
Successive Governments have recognised the importance of music, but their interventions have often focused on individual aspects of the sector rather than the ecosystem as a whole.
Broader strategies
Labour's A Bigger Future (1998) brought together education, industry and cultural policy, nurturing talent and strengthening Britain's reputation as a global music nation. A decade later, Creative Britain positioned the wider creative industries as drivers of economic growth, alongside manufacturing, technology and financial services.
Targeted interventions
The Live Music Act 2012 reduced licensing requirements for smaller live events. The Agent of Change principle protected existing venues from complaints raised by new residential neighbours. The National Plan for Music Education later sought to improve access to music in schools.
What's been missing
Each policy addressed a genuine challenge, but they were developed independently of one another — one on education, another on licensing, another on planning, another on industrial strategy. What has been missing is an overarching framework treating music as an interconnected ecosystem.
That is what makes Turn It Up different. Rather than responding to one specific issue, it attempts to look across the entire music sector, recognising that artists, managers, promoters, festivals, venues, educators, publishers, labels, audiences and technology companies all depend upon one another. There is, of course, still room for debate about whether it goes far enough, but it is undoubtedly the most comprehensive music strategy produced by Government for many years.
Inside the strategy
A programme built on investment — and a shift in how Government talks about music.
£45 million, and a much broader programme
Much of the public discussion has focused on a single headline figure. The £45 million Music Growth Package understandably attracted attention, but it represents only one element of a much broader programme of work — intended to support more than 2,000 projects and over 40,000 artists and music professionals over the next three years, extending beyond venues to managers, promoters, publishers and labels.
Alongside this investment, Government has committed to:
Taken together, this is a shift away from crisis management and towards longer-term strategic planning.
A welcome shift in Government thinking
Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of Turn It Up is not the funding itself but the language that surrounds it. For many years the creative industries have been forced to justify public investment by emphasising their cultural value, almost as though economic growth were a fortunate by-product rather than one of their defining characteristics.
Turn It Up finally reflects a different reality: music contributes billions of pounds to the UK economy every year, supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, and plays a significant role in the success of our hospitality, visitor economy and tourism sectors. That is a subtle change in language, but it represents a significant shift in policy thinking — moving music away from being viewed as a cultural subsidy towards being recognised as an economic asset.
As someone who has spent more than twenty years advising local authorities, Business Improvement Districts, Government departments and private sector organisations on culture, placemaking and the evening and night-time economy, I found that particularly encouraging. Culture is not an optional extra added once regeneration has taken place — more often than not, it is one of the catalysts that makes regeneration possible in the first place.
Where the strategy has further to go
Music has never existed in isolation. Every successful venue relies upon far more than the artists performing on stage.
Throughout Turn It Up there are references to place, communities and local growth, yet the strategy does not fully recognise the conditions required for music to thrive within our towns and cities. Success depends upon:
None of these issues sit neatly within music policy, yet every one of them determines whether the music industry can flourish. Over the past twenty years, having worked with more than sixty towns and cities across the UK, Canada, EU and Ireland on evening and night-time economy strategies, one lesson has remained remarkably consistent: places succeed when they stop looking at individual sectors in isolation and begin understanding how each part contributes to a wider ecosystem.
Music policy cannot simply be viewed as cultural policy. It is equally planning policy, licensing policy, transport policy, regeneration policy and economic development policy.
Music is rarely the sole reason someone visits a town or city, but it is very often the catalyst. People travel to see a gig, a festival or a performance and, whilst they are there, they eat in restaurants, have a drink, stay overnight in local hotels, use taxis and public transport, and spend money in nearby independent businesses. The economic value of music therefore extends far beyond ticket sales — influencing hospitality, tourism, retail, employment, inward investment and the wider perception of a place.
What this means for local authorities
Although Turn It Up is aimed at national Government, it carries an equally important message for town halls. Five questions every local authority should be asking.
01
Does the authority have a music strategy?
And if so, is it connected to the authority's wider regeneration strategy — or does it sit in isolation alongside museums, libraries and arts development?
02
Is licensing policy enabling activity, or creating barriers?
Licensing decisions determine whether responsible cultural activity can happen at all, long before a single note is played.
03
Are planning policies protecting cultural infrastructure?
If planning fails to protect existing venues from residential development pressure, investment in music becomes increasingly risky.
04
Does transport provision reflect the evening economy?
If audiences cannot travel safely after midnight because services have been reduced, attendance inevitably falls.
05
Is music a strategic asset, or just part of the cultural offer?
Music should be viewed as an economic development tool, a regeneration tool and a placemaking tool — one capable of animating high streets and creating the distinctive identity that increasingly determines whether towns and cities succeed.
Delivering the strategy
The greatest challenge facing Turn It Up is unlikely to be the ambition of the strategy itself. It will be delivery.
Collaboration rarely happens naturally. Successful delivery depends on organisations with different priorities, funding pressures and measures of success working towards a shared objective.
A strategy led by DCMS cannot succeed alone — it needs meaningful engagement from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department for Education, the Home Office, the Treasury, combined authorities, local councils and industry itself.
Almost every issue affecting music sits across departmental boundaries: education influences future talent, planning determines whether venues survive, transport affects attendance, policing shapes perceptions of safety.
No single department controls the conditions within which music succeeds — which is precisely why coordination, not ambition, will decide the outcome.
The challenge over the coming years will be ensuring Turn It Up becomes more than a DCMS strategy. It needs to become a Government strategy.
Final reflections
Successful music scenes are shaped as much by our places as by the talent performing within them.
Overall, Turn It Up is one of the strongest national music strategies we have seen for many years. It recognises the importance of the entire music ecosystem, invests in long-term growth rather than short-term crisis management and, perhaps most importantly, begins to reposition music as a strategic economic sector rather than simply a cultural one.
But the publication of this strategy should also be the beginning of a wider conversation. If Government genuinely wants to make the UK the best place in the world to create and experience music, then it must also become the best place in which music can flourish — thinking beyond the industry itself to the places where music happens.
Expert insights across safety, strategy, fundraising and training from the NTES team
Registered in England & Wales