Switzerland’s music money still knows where the chandeliers hang

The numbers are tidy, almost too tidy for comfort. In 2024, the Opernhaus Zürich received 71 million francs from the canton alone, the Grand Théâtre de Genève about 44 million from city and canton combined, while Les Docks in Lausanne got 953,000 francs. If anyone still believed Swiss music policy was designed to flatter the club scene, this should disabuse them quickly.

What the Musikvielfalt-Initiative has now done is not to expose an unknown scandal, but to place six major cities side by side in a way that makes the imbalance harder to hide. The comparison is calculated per capita, which at least gives the figures some meaning beyond the usual fog of cultural bookkeeping. Janina Neustupny of the initiative says this is the first time music funding in cities from German-speaking Switzerland, French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino has been set against one another in this form.

The pattern is blunt. Between 76 and 95 percent of public music funding in the cities examined goes to classical music. In Zurich, classical music receives 223.50 francs per person, while the entire field of Musiques Actuelles — pop, rock, jazz and hip-hop — gets 10.20 francs. Geneva comes out far more generous to pop music at 43.50 francs per person, more than twice Bern’s 20.40 francs and four times Zurich’s figure. Yet even there, the picture is less heroic once the total budget is taken into account. Big numbers, as ever, can be made to say nearly anything if one forgets the denominator.

The deeper problem is structural. More than 80 percent, and in some cases over 90 percent, of the money is locked into multi-year service contracts and tied to the same institutions. That includes pop and rock venues as well: Les Docks in Lausanne receives 953,000 francs a year, Moods in Zurich 917,900, and Kaserne Basel 357,423. For the free and project-based scene, only a small pool of flexible money remains. Innovation is then politely encouraged, provided it can survive on leftovers.

The initiative’s framing also invites a small amount of suspicion. The split between classical music and the more fashionable Musiques Actuelles creates a sharp contrast, perhaps sharper than the scene itself deserves. Neustupny rejects the notion that the study pits genres against each other or lays down demands. The stated aim is simpler: to provide a factual basis for debate. In other words, to hand politics a file thick enough that it can no longer claim ignorance.

That may be the point. The research was commissioned by journalist Lukas Nussbaumer for the Musikvielfalt-Initiative, backed by a broad committee from the Swiss pop, rock and jazz world, including Sophie Hunger, the association Petzi, and various festival and club representatives. A canton-wide initiative was rejected in 2022, but the issue has clearly not gone away. If anything, the study is designed to turn an old argument into a sharper one.

The responses from the funding bodies are cautious, which is hardly surprising. Franziska Burkhardt, Bern’s cultural officer and president of the Städtekonferenz Kultur, called the study an important contribution to the discussion. She noted that cities carry more than half of public cultural funding in Switzerland and that long-term support for institutions creates priorities, even if those same institutions can also provide platforms for freelance bands and orchestras. Katrin Grögel, who heads culture in Basel-Stadt, declined to verify or comment on the figures, pointing out that Basel had settled the matter through a popular initiative.

From the scene, the diagnosis is less restrained. Cécile Drexler of Sonart says Lausanne is full of clubs, Zurich is seeing club closures, and Ticino has practically no concert clubs at all. Small venues, she argues, are crucial to the whole ecosystem. If Switzerland wants a diverse music culture, the answer is not merely to shuffle money around, but to admit that the country is underfunding the field altogether. A rare moment of clarity, perhaps, in a policy area where planning security has become a euphemism for inertia.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com