ABSTRACT
An 'economy' stands for a complex series of decisions involved in the satisfaction of needs and wants through the allocation of scarce resources, where needs, wants and access to resources all differ on an individual and group basis. This chapter discusses the current condition of the UK music economy. The bulk of economic information and theory is expressed in numbers, whether as sets of formulae that yield figures for the 'performance' of an economy, or as masses of statistics that allow economists and media commentators to compare such performance over time and between firms, industries and entire economies. The chapter considers as three economies, the UK music economy would seem to be both weak and strong; turbulent and prosperous; it would seem. It also considers how the UK is experiencing upheavals in the music economy in general, in order to evaluate how, if at all, these challenges are being met.
