Sheeran asks Starmer for 250m for music education

Ed Sheeran has written an open letter to Sir Keir Starmer and the government calling for immediate, long-term funding of music education in the UK.

- ROISIN O'CONNOR

He and more than 600 other artists and industry leaders, including Harry Styles, Elton John, Stormzy, Robert Plant and Eric Clapton, are appealing for a £250m UK music education package this spring to repair “decades of dismantling music”.

“As an industry, we bring in £7.6bn into the UK economy, yet the next generation is not there to take the reins,” Sheeran said.

The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, 34, is one of Britain’s most successful music exports. In 2017, his album Divide became the biggest-selling of the year worldwide, and was credited with helping to propel a record seven per cent growth in export revenues of British music.

That same year, Sheeran appeared alongside fellow artists such as Styles and Sam Smith in the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s global top 10, while Dua Lipa beat titans including Beyonce and Taylor Swift to become Spotify’s most-streamed female artist.

Seven years later, the landscape has changed drastically; last year was the first in over 20 years without a UK global top 10 single or album in the charts.