“Last year alone, 16% of the UK’s grassroots music venues shut their doors permanently, despite nearly 24 million audience visits in that same twelve month period.”
By Samuel Sweek, Music for the Many
British live music is dying.
Or, rather, it is being allowed to silently pass away by a government far more concerned with political point-scoring and conscious cruelty to pay attention to the cries of those in the arts calling for help in increasingly desperate times.
It is absolutely essential that the government acts now to save British live music and secures a viable future for the next generation of artists. Without action, they will almost certainly have laid to waste the talent and creative ambition of millions, and dozens more cultural institutions will be lost in the coming months alone.
Grassroots music venues are where new artists play their first shows, nurture their talent, craft their identity, get noticed and, ultimately, build the following that allows them to go on to bigger things. Without them, elitist entryism remains essentially the only pathway into a career in music. Who you know triumphs over what you know or how well you do it.
If the solution had teeth, it would’ve bitten this Conservative government.
It is why we have launched a new petition calling for a small levy to be applied to the ticket sales of large music arenas to support grassroots music venues.
Our Music For The Many campaign has been making the case for such a levy for almost a year and, whilst we are delighted to see more campaigning organisations within the sector echoing our demands, the political response has been largely ambivalent at best and wilfully ignorant at worst.
The economics of the levy are simple and socialist in their principle. Those at the very top of the pile, the corporate sponsors of large music arenas, should pay a small levy on ticket sales, with no additional fees added to customers. This money must then be directed to a specific fund set up to support grassroots music venues.
An example of how this model could work is that a sold-out show at Manchester’s AO Arena with a £1 grassroots music venue fund levy applied to each ticket could raise £21,000 in just one night. Just a portion of these funds could save a grassroots music venue struggling under the heavy weight of the soaring costs of day-to-day operations, or with accessibility upgrades and much-needed new equipment.
The Music Venue Trust reports that, last year alone, 16% of the UK’s grassroots music venues shut their doors permanently, despite nearly 24 million audience visits in that same twelve month period. This shows that it is far from a lack of interest in seeing live music in our communities that has led us to this critical point, but rather a total failure of the exploitative system fostered by the corporate nature of vast swathes of the music industry.
This year, with a general election looming, it is absolutely essential that we keep the issues facing the British music industry on the agenda. Every single candidate vying for your vote will have a venue in their constituency that is in dire need of help — it’s up to all of us to pressure them into backing these demands and legislating to save them.
The government has proven as recently as the last few days that it is more than willing to intervene in the music industry. Last week, Belfast hip-hop band KNEECAP announced that the British government prevented them from receiving a Music Export Growth Scheme funding award by overruling an independent selection board decision.
If the government concerned itself with the bleak futures of many grassroots music venues instead of disgracefully censoring artists whose views they disagree with, then it is absolutely fair to say that the long-term sustainability of independent music venues probably wouldn’t be in the peril they are today.
Since launching Music For The Many, I have been honoured to host the numerous live shows we’ve put on up and down the country. From London to Glasgow and Sheffield to Brighton and everywhere in between, it is clear that live music can provide a sanctuary from the harshest of realities. I see myself in the crowd sometimes, as a teenager and in more recent times, escaping the outside world just for a night. It’s a feeling of enormous responsibility, as well as privilege, for our organisation to be leading the political charge for immediate change to how arts are funded.
Live music has pulled me back from the brink and has undoubtedly saved the lives of millions of others too.
Our time to save live music is now.
- Samuel Sweek is the Convenor of Music for the Many and the Media Co-Ordinator for the Peace & Justice Project. You can follow Samuel on Twitter/X here; and the PPJ on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
- You can write to your MP and call for action to save local live music venues here.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
