Croatia's cultural and creative industries have recorded sharp declines in revenues since pre-pandemic 2019, of 8.5 per cent on average, with some segments, such as music, film and art, having seen their revenues plunge by as much as 40, 35 and 25 per cent respectively, a conference was told in the eastern city of Osijek on Wednesday.

A study on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Croatian cultural and creative industries, which the Ministry of Culture commissioned from the Zagreb Institute of Economics, also shows that some segments, such as video games, have seen increases in revenues since 2019, said Nenad Marcec, director-general of the Croatian Association of Composers.

Last year was still about 12% below the 2019 levels, but given that there were not many concerts and the tourism industry and cinemas operated at a reduced capacity, this is acceptable because a lot of revenues were generated from YouTube, Netflix and some other platforms that now have a large number of subscribers in Croatia. In 2015, there were about 2,000 subscribers to these services, and now there are 200,000, which is “a tectonic shift” that occurred during the pandemic and helped authors weather this crisis, he said.

Asked by the press what he expected from the new Copyright Act, Marcec said that it entered into force in December 2020 and would ensure the implementation of new directives on copyright on the digital market, which regulate the responsibilities of Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram for the use of copyright and make it possible for authors to get their fees. He said that these services had become multimillion companies that paid the authors hardly anything and the new law should benefit the authors.