When Music Speaks - Mental Health and Next Steps in the Danish Music Industry. Part 3 - Danish Music Creators' Working Lives and Mental Health Wants

Executive Summary:

• This report contains findings based on interviews with seventeen music creators living and working in Denmark, all of whom saw music-making as their main career, encompassing a range of genres, ages, career stages, levels of anxiety and depression, and levels of subjective wellbeing.
• Interviewees reported a number of psychosocial challenges emanating from their work as music creators. A predominant theme was that of loneliness, understood herein as a feeling of isolation and a lack of support.
• Female music creators suffered specific challenges related to sexism, misogyny and ageism.
• Features of Danish society and the Danish music industry were highlighted as factors. These were:
o Fragmentation across the music supply chain in Denmark. o Socio-cultural norms of Danish society.
o Challenges they felt they faced within, or when exiting, the music education system.
• Music’s healing abilities and the positive role it plays in people’s lives was also highlighted.

• Interviewees highlighted two areas of reform which they felt might offer tangible improvements to their mental health and wellbeing. These were:

1) Structural reform and improvements in their working conditions. Three forms were noted:
o Changes to methods of government subsidy for music creators.
o Changes to better support the self-employed.
o Changes to music industry working practices to emphasise cultures
of care and understanding.

2) Initiatives to foster community, togetherness and knowledge sharing. Two forms were noted:
o Easier access to music business information to enable career
development.
o Spaces for peer support.

• Interviewees were clear that they valued forms of mental health intervention where it was undertaken by those with shared lived experience of music creators’ working lives.