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 OK i.e. I think the chart is validly constructed.
EMI was sold to Sony & Universal in 2012 and so their balance of trade position was probably reversed at that time and then they were a competitively large music publisher. 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. My conclusion is that it is not historically true to say that the Creative industries are a net contributor to the UK foreign exchange account.
It's disappointing that the figures stop two and bit years ago.