Music Venue Trust CEO Mark Davyd says grassroots venues and touring artists face linked financial pressures that are keeping shows from taking place. The charity’s Liveline programme aims to make those shows possible by covering financial risks that venues, promoters or artists cannot take on.
Pressure on venues and artists
Figures discussed with Davyd put the average grassroots venue’s profit margin at 2.5%, with more than half making no profit. Davyd argues that the venues where artists develop and audiences form receive too little financial support from the wider music industry.
He describes rising costs, shrinking margins and fewer opportunities for touring artists and venues alike. When artists cannot afford to tour and venues cannot afford to book them, audiences also lose access to live performances.
Music Venue Trust is a UK registered charity founded in January 2014 to protect and improve grassroots music venues in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its work includes the Everywhere at Once festival, a weekend of independent music involving hundreds of venues from Inverness to Penzance.
How Liveline supports shows
Liveline identifies shows that are unlikely to happen because the financial risk is too high, then steps in to cover that risk. Davyd gave three examples:
- A venue cannot guarantee an artist’s fee.
- A promoter faces a shortfall.
- A touring artist cannot make a show financially viable.
Davyd says the programme is intended to enable shows with a sound basis that current costs prevent from going ahead. He says each show can create work for artists, promoters, venues and crew while giving audiences access to live music.
Rebuilding local music scenes
175 UK towns and cities have lost regular professional touring. Davyd says developing local artists, promoters and audiences could help make touring viable in those places again.
He also questions how live music revenue is distributed. In discussing ticket prices, he contrasted £100-plus arena tickets with expectations that a show by an emerging band in a 200-capacity room should cost £10. He said some fans will pay £150 to watch an artist on a screen from 100 metres away while questioning a £10 ticket to see an artist from three feet away, though grassroots audiences are often younger and have less disposable income.
Davyd pointed to planning protections, community ownership of venue buildings, touring support and investment from more successful parts of the industry as approaches that could be used beyond the UK.
