Music Venue Trust (MVT), which represents hundreds of UK grassroots music venues (GMVs) has launched its 2024 Annual Report, which once again raises concerns about the ongoing challenges facing the sector.
Despite highlighting positive activity such as MVT celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2024, the continued success of Music Venue Properties (MVP), which has now secured freehold ownership of five GMVs, and the publication of a Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) report that made strong recommendations to support grassroots music, it is clear that significant work is still needed to prevent a continued decline of the sector.
A survey of the 810 members of the Music Venues Alliance (MVA), who employ over 30,000 people throughout the GMV community, found that they staged over 162,000 live music events comprising almost 1.5m individual artist performances given to a total audience of just under 20 million. The total direct value to the UK economy from these events was £526m. However, on average GMV’s, 33% of which are now registered as not-for profit entities – a 29% increase in not-for-profit registration since 2023 – operated on a profit margin of just 0.48% with 43.8% of them reporting a loss in the last 12 months. This means that the sector as a whole effectively subsidised live music activity to the tune of £162m.
One of the most concerning trends to have emerged from this report is the huge decline in locations on the UK’s primary and secondary touring circuits. In the 30 year period between 1994 and 2024 those touring locations have collapsed, with an average tour in 1994 including 22 dates and the equivalent tour in 2024 consisting of only 11 dates. Furthermore, touring in 1994 was spread across a range of 28 different locations across the country. In 2024, just 12 locations, all of them major cities, remained as primary and secondary touring circuit stops, acting as regular hosts to grassroots tours.
Cities and towns such as Leicester, Edinburgh, Bath, Hull, Windsor, and Stoke on Trent among others have dropped off the primary route over the last few years and for some areas, like Scotland and Wales, this means swathes of the country have been cut off altogether, resulting in people having to travel further or simply being unable to access live music at all. The result, demonstrated in this report, is a decrease in the total number of live music shows (down 8.3% since 2023) accompanied by an even steeper decline in ticket revenues (down 13.5% since 2023).
In addition MVT’s Emergency Response Service dealt with 200 emergency response cases, a 19% increase from 2023, representing 24.9% of the membership facing a threat of permanent closure. The service offered financial, planning, licensing, noise, acoustics, and legal advice to GMVs across the UK, directly responding to a broad range of key issues facing venues. However, in disputes involving planning issues a 97.7% success rate was achieved. The adoption of the ‘Agent of Change’ principle, which states that the responsibility for mitigation of the impact of a planning application falls to the Agent of Change and not to existing businesses to modify their practices, as guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the use of Section 106 agreements between local councils and developers have been vital factors in protecting GMVs from redevelopment threats.
Mark Davyd CEO of Music Venue Trust said: “The 2024 Annual Report recognises that after 10 years of work by MVT a very broad consensus has been built among policitians, industry, artists and the public that grassroots music venues must be protected, supported, encouraged and nurtured. In 2025, we have to see that consensus bring forward positive, practical interventions in the real world. Venues, despite all the very welcome good intentions and acknowledgements they are receiving for their vital work, are still closing, still under extreme and totally unnecessary financial pressures, still failing to be recognised, as everyone agrees they should and must be, when government designs policy, taxation, and legislation. It isn’t good enough to keep saying how much we all value them, we’ve got to practically do something about it. We need action not words.”
To access the full 2024 Annual Report please click here.
