More than 100 UK festivals – one in six – have closed permanently since the start of the Covid pandemic, three in the last week alone, due to staffing shortages and the high costs of energy and equipment such as fencing, toilets and stages.
Especially when you consider the CEO of Live Nation is raking it in
There’s such little investment in live music since record labels stopped subsidising touring. But huge profits being made by the few.
I spent 2 weeks on tour with The Anchoress recently and was eye opening the state of the industry having not toured much in last year.
One notable thing was that we played one Live Nation venue and it was the worst night of the tour. There was a 5 floor load in but we couldn’t use the lift and all the burly security couldn’t help due to their insurance not covering it. There weren’t hooks to hold the doors open when carrying gear. One of the PA speakers was falling apart. The in house sound guy was anti-social and didn’t move the barriers so we could load onto the stage. The dressing room was tiny (room for 2 people to sit down) behind the stage with no toilet and no way to get to toilets without walking across the stage. We then couldn’t load out for almost an hour as there were still 10 fans in another venue as our van might block fire exit. Pretty much no thought went into making it a functioning venue or pleasant experience. Whereas even tiny venues had a helpful attitude and thought through the basics.
Be really curious of your experiences of live music as an artist or gig goer now, compared to recent and distant past.
Was also an interesting chat on our Facebook about how festivals announced their closure and why that might be. Cost of living is obviously a big one but also higher prices of some gigs meaning less people have to spend on other shows.
The article is a bit of a mess. But it all comes down to sales for festivals right - if there’s no demand then your product is not going to succeed. Would like to know when many of these festivals - those that have gone under especially - actually launched.
The author attributes some of it to young people not going to traditionally large festivals as a right of passage (those that are buffered by Live Nation/Goldenvoice/etc - eh?) but then defers to the likes of Chagstock (never heard of it and I’m pretty on the pulse) with hip-with-the-kids band Maximo Park going under? Dunno.
The margins on the costs of touring are really depressing though, having to barebones your setup and the like, don’t get me wrong. But it’s been abundantly clear that the market for festivals in the UK has been a bubble waiting to burst.
Also using Doune as an example - they literally went bankrupt last year and created a new company to put on another festival: unsuccessful, surprisingly!
Been talking a little bit about TRNSMT to friends over the last few days – the way they’re still trying to flog tickets (it’s taking place this weekend) plus the number for sale on Twickets etc make us think it hasn’t sold that well.
But the whole thing just seems disjointed and done on the cheap – even if you like some of the smaller acts on the bill, there’s no depth there, not enough to really shift tickets. This is meant to be Scotland’s major festival, basically the successor to T in the Park, and I’m aware that there will be an element of me now being in my 30s rather than late teens to this, but the difference seems ridiculous:
(Kendrick and Deacon Blue on the same level of the bill, oh yes)
Not sure if I’m saying anything useful about the general state of live music, but no wonder festivals are closing when lots of them are clearly struggling to put much on stage in the 2020s.
I’m not at all belittling the abject state of the music scene in the UK and beyond - I know bands have never had it so tough - but surely 600 festivals in the UK can’t be a sustainable proposition anyway - god knows music is my one true passion but how could that many festivals honestly work?
this does seem to be a UK specific thing though right, possibly down to a lot of factors at bureaucratic and personal level that prevent DIY spaces surviving in one location. ie. rent, insurance, the rise of the city-based gentry and their bourgeoise opposition to noise-producing spaces, lack of viable and unifying media/criticism, generally shitty conditions UK has always provided compared to Europe/elsewhere.
obvously fuck LiveNation and SJM and all them others but also are people still able to make a small 80-100 cap all-ages place even work without John Law and Susie Council fucking it up? is there a legal route from a squat to an official place like there is in France, Netherlands, Germany? Britain thinks its place at the cultural high seat is organic and down to our god-given talent, when actually it was about instrumentalising power in its favour. it needs to do that again, but in redistributive way rather than a colonial one. levy arena tickets and give the proceeds to small venues.
the first time I toured France I cried because it was so much easier and nicer than the years of slog I’d put in here.
I used to love getting the Wednesday music papers when they were a thing and checking the classifieds in NME & Melody Maker for the tours that bands were doing, playing shows in places I’d never been (and probably wouldn’t go to). Shame there is such a narrow and well trodden path that most bands now follow.
I went to a new venue this afternoon - the Fighting Cocks in Kingston - to see Hey Colossus. Great to go to a packed old school feral black box of a venue.
Not convinced the problem is a lack of venues or “city gentry” (lol), it’s simply that the economics of being in a band have been decimated by streaming while the cost of living has skyrocketed, and it’s simply not viable for most artists to do long tours anymore. It’s not even necessarily around the results, it’s the risk involved when there’s not an alternate source of income to hedge it against.
We’re at the point now where artists like Los Campesinos’ first UK tour in seven years consists of six dates and they skip playing in the North East entirely. If they can’t make it work how can someone playing to 1/3rd that number (if they’re lucky)?
but this is a post about touring bands who at least have the option of going where they definitely have fans; grassroots is about having the place to play and completely disregard the hard economic factors - to make art, to take those tentative steps in playing and giving new promoters a chance to curate. 960 grassroots venues closed in 2022, so I think it is a fairly prominent issue.
and the city gentry comment is a bit of a joke, but also the reason Night and Day is under constant threat - because of people who flock to Manchester’s Northern Quarter and then decimate the culture that underpins its cool.
Not wanting to understate the terrible economic state of music venues. But spaces to perform do exist - but 90% of bands will play 90% of the same venues/cities.
This is the back of my The Bug Club tee shirt from a couple of years ago, they played 22 UK dates. Why aren’t more bands playing such a wide range of venues? Lack of willing promoters? Lack of audiences in the ‘sticks’? Unwillingness of bands to try new ‘markets’? Economics when the band is more than a 3 piece? (Another of my favourite live bands, The Wave Pictures are also very good at playing new and different venues across tours. They are also a 3 piece). All of the above? I’ve never promoted nor played in a band so I’m genuinely interested in why the range of towns/cities played has collapsed so much in the last 20 years.
They’re actually back at the Cluny on November 13th this year as well.
I’m missing it cos Uranium Club are playing that night but the Bug Club are back here next February playing a venue in Sunderland, so I’ll probably go to that instead. Good folk
Good article. Closing venues, gentrification, general economics of being a musician are all factors for sure.
There’s parts of the debate that confuse me a little bit in how it’s laid out. And other things I think it’s worth adding in.
First off, as @Prob500 mentions, loads of bands are doing long tours. It’s a bit weird to use Coldplay and Get Cape as examples of bands doing short tours and point to that as the norm currently. I also don’t really look back on the idea of “54 dates as standard” in as rose tinted a way as it’s expressed here. Touring is, for a lot of artists, not that fun. Money aside, you’re away from home, it’s stressful… as a society we’re a bit more honest about mental health and wellbeing now, and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to see more bands doing shorter tours as part of having more autonomy about how much they actually want to be on the road (rather than being forced to do longer runs by labels etc).
An additional factor is the saturation of the touring industry since covid. Much like we saw with pressing plants. After covid, every fuckin’ band wanted to play live. I’ve never seen such long lead-ins for shows in my life as what I see currently. As an example, the latest gig I played had been booked 14 months ago. That would be unthinkable to me 5 years ago.
That all being said I agree with what Lisa Nandy and the MVT says. Grassroots venues closing eliminate cultural access for certain communities. It’s one of the reasons I put the effort into bringing niche acts to Plymouth. It’s also heartening to see Coldplay and the Piece Hall helping fund smaller venues to keep the broader ecosystem going.
