Dear SMIA Members,
As 2024 draws to a close, on behalf of the SMIA team and company board, I’d like to wish you all a relaxing festive period, and all the best for the year ahead.
We’re aware that this can be a difficult time for many people. Should anyone need support, we’d encourage you to reach out to Music Minds Matter. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Music Minds Matter is Help Musicians’ dedicated and confidential mental health support line and service for the whole UK music community. It doesn’t have to be a crisis, or about music. Music Minds Matter are there to listen, support and help at any time.
As you’ll likely have seen, earlier this month the Scottish Government announced their draft budget for 2025-26. It was a significant and crucially important win for Scotland’s cultural sector, seeing us enter 2025 with a renewed sense of optimism and confidence after an incredibly challenging year. I’d like to thank everyone across the sector who campaigned to see this vital investment realised. In case you missed it, you can learn more about the draft budget in our recent statement.
281 cultural organisations (the SMIA being one of them) now await the outcomes of Creative Scotland’s Multi-Year Funding programme at the end of January. Tough decisions await, as even with the additional £34m investment in culture next year, there’s still a significant gap between the funding available to support the programme and the total ask from applicants. These funding decisions will be another crucial moment for our collective future, and sector-wide, it’s essential that we work collaboratively to ensure that Scottish culture is supported, safeguarded and sustained in the months and years to come.
Whilst 2024 has presented many challenges, for the SMIA, it’s also been a pivotal year in our ongoing development. In January, the MMF Accelerator Programme for Music Managers opened for its annual round of applications, and we were delighted to see Aimmi Dunsmuir (Machina Management) and Jen Anderson (The Bothy Society) selected as part of 2024’s cohort. Our long-term strategic partnership with the MMF on the Accelerator programme enables two Scotland-based managers to participate each year, with the initiative designed to build sustainable full-time management businesses and to further the ambitions of talented entrepreneurs. The impact of the programme is undeniable, and if it sounds of interest, we’d encourage you to keep an eye out for Accelerator 2025 details early in the new year.
In February we launched our new website, which significantly enhanced the accessibility and impact of our digital support services. Since then, we’ve posted over 500 member opportunities and added over 200 industry resources to support the sector’s professional development. We’ve seen our website traffic triple year-on-year, with over 1,200 new members having signed up in the last 10 months alone. This significant increase meant that, in October, we reached the key milestone of 5,000 SMIA members. Thanks to everyone who’s been part of our journey so far.
It’s been great to welcome so many new members into our community this year, made up of individuals working in – or aspiring to work in – music in Scotland across a wide range of sub-sectors, genres and career levels, and who are based all across the country. Building and nurturing a diverse membership community which reflects the full spectrum of Scotland’s music industry is a key part of our ongoing mission, and strong member engagement is crucial in enabling us to best serve the interests of the sector. We really appreciate everyone who actively engages in and supports the delivery of our work, and we look forward to many more opportunities to drive industry development together in 2025.
We recognise that there are still a number of people to bring into our membership community, particularly those from marginalised backgrounds who face additional barriers to participation in the Scottish music industry. Across 2024, we’ve placed an enhanced focus on reducing inequality, increasing diversity, enabling inclusion and enhancing access, kicking off what will be a large piece of strategic work which will span across the next three years and beyond. In April we opened applications for our newly established Equalities, Diversity, Inclusion and Access (EDIA) Advisory Group, and in July, we announced the appointment of seven inaugural members.
Our EDIA Advisory Group have been working to co-design an EDIA strategy for Scotland’s music industry, and this work will be an integral part of not only the SMIA’s strategic direction, but that of the entire sector. The EDIA strategy will outline a sector vision along with a targeted action plan to get us there; one which we can all play a part in delivering and achieving. Across 2025, we will be consulting with both our membership and the wider sector to ensure that the EDIA strategy is informed by a broad range of diverse lived experiences, and it will be designed to drive meaningful and lasting cultural change across Scotland’s music industry. I’d like to thank our EDIA Advisory Group for their invaluable input so far, and we look forward to progressing this essential work across 2025 and beyond.
This year we continued our long-term partnerships with industry conferences Wide Days and Resonate, and we introduced bursaries to enable individuals facing barriers to attend both events. We also continued working with UHI Perth as an Academic Partner, enabling the next generation of music professionals to access a host of professional development opportunities, and ensuring that graduate skills are mapped to industry needs within Scotland. We augmented our partnership this year to include a schools roadshow, with Aja and Daria from our team running a workshop for young people to give an insight into what a career in music could look like. Our Academic Partnerships are designed to drive sector growth by strengthening the future talent pipeline, and we look forward to building our network of partners further in the new year.
In September we hosted The SMIA Summit, a two-day, free to attend digital conference which was designed to shape the future of Scotland’s music industry. With attendees comprising SMIA members, key industry stakeholders and policymakers, across seven thematic sessions, we explored topics including sector value and investment, sustainability, fair work, accessible music spaces and addressing gender discrimination. With a progressive format, each session allowed participants to deep dive into key sector development priorities before discussing how we build on strengths, address weaknesses, capitalise on opportunities and mitigate threats. Thanks to everyone who took part. For anyone who missed it, early in the new year we’ll be publishing videos of all Summit sessions, so keep an eye out for these. We’d love to hear your thoughts on what was discussed. We’ll then be moving into a phase of sector consultation where we’ll be unpicking some of the key topics/discussion points further, as well as announcing details for the SMIA Summit 2025. Stay tuned for more info.
This year also saw us deliver the thirteenth Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award campaign, which culminated in our 2024 Ceremony at Stirling’s Albert Halls on Thursday 24 October. From an incredible 370 eligible albums submitted this year, we were delighted to see rEDOLENT claim Scotland’s national music prize with their debut album ‘dinny greet’. As a powerful and resonant body of work, its experimental indie pop sound draws on both sharp social commentary and inventive electronic textures, firmly establishing the band as a unique and important voice in Scottish music. By writing and singing in their own demotic, ‘dinny greet’ carries an unmistakable self-assurance, reflecting not just rEDOLENT’s journey, but where we are culturally as a nation in 2024. If you’ve not listened already, check out 2024’s Scottish Album of the Year Award winner here.
This year’s SAY Award Ceremony also saw rising talent Dillon Barrie awarded the Sound of Young Scotland Award, with Dillon winning a funding package worth up to £10,000 to support the creation of his debut album. Additionally, Martyn Bennett’s iconic album ‘Grit’ was celebrated as the winner of the Modern Scottish Classic Award – a seminal record that fused traditional Scottish music with cutting-edge electronica, creating a lasting legacy which continues to inspire generations of artists and music fans alike. Chosen as the winner by this year’s 20-strong SAY Award Longlist, we celebrated ‘Grit’ through a specially curated unique performance; one which will undoubtedly be remembered for many years to come. You can watch the highlights video from this year’s SAY Award Ceremony, as well as some of the amazing live performances as part of the show, on our YouTube channel.
Incredibly, The SAY Award has now distributed over £390,000 in prize money to Scottish artists and championed 260 Longlisted albums. I’d like to say a massive thanks to our partners for their invaluable support and commitment to celebrating, promoting and rewarding outstanding Scottish albums. We’re ending the year with a special, free-to-attend SAY Award showcase as part of Edinburgh Hogmanay’s ‘first footin’, and we recently announced a series of shows at The Tolbooth in Stirling where former winners and nominees will be performing their SAY-nominated albums in full. You can find all the info here, with some more shows to be announced soon.
Looking ahead to next year, we’re both keen and determined to build on the successes of 2024. Our plans are centred on the core belief that an authentic Scottish strategy is required to deliver for a distinctive and diverse Scottish music industry, and for that strategy to be effective, it has to be both co-designed and co-delivered with the sector we exist to support.
2025 will see us focus on strategic partnerships, enhanced sector engagement and macro-level interventions that address systemic challenges and drive lasting change. We’ll focus not just on driving economic growth, but on cultural enrichment, social empowerment and contributing to broader strategic goals for Scotland; allowing our industry to play its part in building a better, fairer, more ethical, more sustainable, more diverse, more vibrant and more confident nation.
We look forward to sharing more details of our upcoming work soon, and to continuing to work with you in the months ahead.
For now, once again, have a great festive break, and wishing you all the best for 2025.
If you’re looking for some music to soundtrack the final weeks of the year, how about you listen back to the 20 outstanding Scottish albums that made up 2024’s SAY Award Longlist. You can do so via sayaward.com
All the best,
Robert
Robert Kilpatrick
CEO and Creative Director
Scottish Music Industry Association (SMIA)