I Love Eurovision, But It Spreads A Myth That Music Matters. It Doesn’t.

If we substantively invest in music in all contestant countries, we would all benefit

This was the most watched Eurovision final for U.K. audiences and by all means of analysis, a success for the City of Liverpool and the continent as a whole. It is hard to ignore the pomp, majesty and sheer exuberance of the song contest, especially at a time when Europe is at war. In uniting the continent, Eurovision demonstrated its importance, and strengthened its impact as a soft-power tool. Eurovision can both smooth cultural edges and simultaneously voice political dissent, all while blending diverse genres into three hours of living room familiarity. We may know nothing about a participating country and its culture, but the spectacle is simple enough to understand. Through music, our universal language, we are, as the hashtag goes, united by it.

While the music unifies, Eurovision also perpetuates a myth that all the participating countries, and their administrations, care about music. For the most part, there’s little evidence to back that up. Few competing in the final do much, if anything at all, to support and develop their music ecosystems at home. Eurovision offers a chance to change that, but only if we first accept this myth, and do something about it.

The European music sector contributes over 2 million jobs and €81 billion across the EU 27. Yet, music is not a serious business in many nations. Take Bulgaria, for example. The European Commission referred its government to the European Court of Justice for not transposing EU copyright law into national law. Bulgaria was not the only one referred – Finland, Latvia, Portugal and Poland were also. Copyright in Azerbaijan, for example, has no practical existence because of a lack of enforcement. Albania, while developing an emerging electronic music festival scene, has few formal music industry structures. These are not the exceptions. They are more the norm.

Music education, particularly teaching genres outside of the Western classical tradition and teaching music business is also, in places, non-existent. There is no music business school outside of the conservatory framework in Romania, for example. While new funding for music education was announced in the U.K in 2022, there has been a significant decline in folks from working class backgrounds working in music and the arts. Other than France and a few local and regional administrations in northern Europe and Scandinavia, there are no national music bodies outside of privately run industry lobbies – which represent their members – and music information centres – which are focused on heritage and preservation. Music is often not incorporated into economic development frameworks, especially in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Moreover, In the UK, the music sector, despite being a £5.4 billion industry, was ignored in the Brexit negotiations, which has cost musicians millions in lost fees and thousands of cancelled tour dates. Piracy in Italy remains troublingly high. And so on.

There are valiant and impressive efforts inside the European Commission to change this, but it takes all member states and third-nation partners to implement and track these reforms. And judging by the success of the show on Saturday, Eurovision demonstrates an immense opportunity to do so for all involved. Music, not only on Saturday but in every city, town and place every day of the week, unites us, accrues economic benefit and creates jobs, skills and self-worth to millions. A modest investment – influenced by countries that are investing such as France, Finland, Sweden and Estonia – could create thousands more jobs, retain talent and support mental health and wellbeing. But this can only be the case if, across all nations that competed, copyright was protected, diverse and pan-genre music education was nationalised and music offices, such as France’s CNM, were established everywhere.

Instead, for some countries, Eurovision is a musical Potemkin Village. It provides the glitzy facade that celebrates music, but behind the scenes on the ground in many countries, there’s not much there. The success and longevity of this song contest and the expansion of the model around the world shows that music is one of the most powerful tools we have to address the challenges we all face together. If we took the example that Eurovision shows and busted this myth, we could turn our love of music into substantive, long-term investment. This would mean creating publicly-funded positions to support, develop and monitor music, implement copyright transparency, fund music education including the skills and training needed to foster jobs both off stage and on stage and ensure music is represented across economic growth policies, including those to fight the climate emergency, support disadvantaged communities and promote sustainable tourism.

If so, it would not only transform Europe. It would be transformative everywhere. Because as the hashtag says, we are, supposedly, united by music.