MUSIC INDUSTRY: INPUT SOUGHT ON DRAFT POLICY & STRATEGY DOCUMENTS

MUSIC INDUSTRY: INPUT SOUGHT ON DRAFT POLICY & STRATEGY DOCUMENTS

• 07 April 2025
• Sport, Arts & Culture
• SA Legal Academy

Please note: On 10 April 2025, the department replaced the incomplete notice with one that includes a link to the documents concerned. 

The Department of Sport, Arts & Culture has called for input by 30 June 2025 on a draft policy and strategy for the music industry. Unfortunately, a link to the documents was erroneously omitted from the notice announcing this, which was gazetted on 4 April 2025. SA Legal Academy has since acquired the documents, links to which are provided at the end of this report.

According to the notice, once finalised the proposed new policy and strategy are expected to provide ‘a framework to guide the development of the music industry, ensuring its sustainable growth and contribution to the broader cultural … (sector)’.

To that end, among other things the draft policy seeks to ‘clearly define the state’s role in creating an enabling environment that would ensure (the industry’s) growth, development and sustainability’. An executive summary of the proposed new policy refers to the findings of a recent ‘situational analysis’, which underscored the importance of:

• promoting ‘diversity’ and fostering ‘a thriving and inclusive’ music industry
• ensuring access to ‘education’ and ‘aligning …(it) with industry needs’
• ‘access to resources’
• ‘intellectual property regulation’
• ‘addressing labour laws’
• effective governance
• ‘support (for)’ music practitioners and various forms of artistic initiatives’
• interventions to ‘stimulate collaboration’
• ‘promoting interdepartmental collaboration’
• ‘safety at events’, and
• ‘preserving music history’.

The draft strategy’s executive summary refers to an overarching ‘vision’, the ‘three key outcomes’ of which would be to ensure:

• access to ‘comprehensive education and training’ across the entire music industry
• ongoing music industry ‘promotion’ through ‘advocacy and stakeholder engagement’, and
• the development and enforcement of ‘effective regulatory frameworks’.

This is nevertheless noting ‘several barriers’ to the strategy’s ‘effective implementation, including’:

• ‘funding limitations’, affecting the department’s ‘capacity to support grassroots initiatives and fulfil unfunded mandates’, and
• the ‘competing interests, genre-based divisions and internal conflicts’ likely to ‘hinder cohesive strategy implementation and collective bargaining power’.

Please click the links below for more information:

• draft policy
• draft strategy
• Government Gazette notice

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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