'Eurovision vital post-Brexit' say UK music industry leaders

UK music industry leaders have hailed the “vital importance” of Eurovision and the vast international platform it offers UK talent ahead of Saturday night’s (May 22) contest, which takes place in Rotterdam at the Ahoy arena.

Flying the flag for the United Kingdom this year is James Newman with Embers, an upbeat electro pop banger replete with a bold, brass-embellished chorus, backed up by giant white trumpets and show-stopping pyrotechnics as part of the stage production. It’s as impressive an entry as the UK has entered in recent years, yet it’d be a brave person to bet on it landing anywhere close to the upper reaches of the rankings come Saturday night.

Not that that necessarily matters. For decades, the voting at Eurovision has had about as much to do with music as the recently tanked European Super League project had to do with football. For Newman and the UK music industry, Eurovision is about reach and exposure.

The 2019 Eurovision contest (2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic) was watched on TV by 182 million viewers across 40 markets worldwide, according to the EBU. And of particular interest to the music industry is the growing number of young people engaging with the contest. In 2019, 15–24-year-olds accounted for 45% of the grand final viewing share.

Meanwhile, the week of Eurovision 2019 saw 40 million unique viewers watch the event on YouTube from 225 territories – 72% of this audience were under-35s.

“The platform is incredibly important, as it showcases UK music and our creativity to a huge audience, not just in Europe but across the world,” Tom Kiehl, deputy CEO at UK Music told Headliner. “It’s consumed globally and has a life outside of the contest. It doesn’t tally that if you do badly in the contest that that’s the end for that song.”

Kiehl highlighted the importance of the UK’s participation in Eurovision in light of Brexit and the devastating impact it will have on UK artists looking to grow a European fan base.

“From an industry perspective, when you consider the UK’s role in a post-Brexit world, it’s really important that the industry is embedded within Eurovision,” he continued. “In that context it is vitally important that we maintain a strong profile because one of the challenges we are going to face is growing markets overseas. It’s such an international event and has such huge viewing figures. The industry does value it.”

Gennaro Castaldo, director of communications at the BPI, also commented on the relevance of Eurovision to the music business beyond the standings on the night.

“Eurovision offers a massive global audience of highly engaged fans, both for the entrants and for the artists that provide the show’s entertainment,” he told Headliner. “Would Madonna have performed if it didn’t? It may feel like the odds are sometime stacked against the UK winning, or even making top five, but with the right song and artist there’s no reason why a UK artist can’t come in to play – and you don’t necessarily even have to win to find an audience – look how well Iceland’s 2020 entry and Eurovision favourite Think About Things by Daði og Gagnamagnið did in global plays and sync deals. James Newman’s My Last Breath could have done relatively well with a top 10 finish had the contest gone ahead last year, and all the signs are that the UK is now moving firmly in the right direction.”

Both Kiehl and Castaldo also feel that the view of some that Eurovision is something of a kitsch, novelty affair is one that is on the wane. Especially in view of the way that the dominance of streaming in recent years has opened up the market.

“It remains important, even if the UK hasn’t won it for some time,” said Castaldo. “Chances are that British songwriters, publishers and labels may be involved somewhere along the line, and as an event it promotes music to a huge global audience – something that we can take pride in being a world leader as a nation, especially through the global reach of streaming.

“The UK took the contest very seriously in its ‘classic years’ of ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s and had a record that was second to none in terms of its songwriters and profile of artists, but then the nature of the competition seemed to change when the number of entrants expanded dramatically after the fall of The Berlin Wall and then the break-up of the Soviet Union. Suddenly it became about geo-voting blocks, and the type of songs that started doing well were not typically British, or French, Italian, Spanish or German anymore. And that sense of novelty may have become a little more engrained.

“In fact, when people are quick to say how the competition now seems stacked against the UK, they sometimes forget that none of the major western nations tend to do that well. You have to go back to 2010 and Lena and her song Satellite for the last time one of the ‘Big 5’ won, and then back as far as 1997, when our very own Katrina and The Waves won with Shine A Light. What that tells me is that a brilliant song will always do well, whichever country performs them.”

“Given such an opportunity as Eurovision, many artists will take it,” Kiehl added. “There will of course be some who for various reasons may not want to have an association with it, and that’s fine, it’s maybe not for a certain type of artist. But for many it can be a defining and profound moment.”