{"id":8957,"date":"2024-01-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/2024\/01\/29\/grassroots-live-music-venues-suffer-most-challenging-year\/"},"modified":"2024-01-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-29T00:00:00","slug":"grassroots-live-music-venues-suffer-most-challenging-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/grassroots-live-music-venues-suffer-most-challenging-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Grassroots live music venues suffer &#8216;most challenging year&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Music Venue Trust (MVT), which represents hundreds of UK Grassroots Music Venues (GMVs), has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.musicvenuetrust.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/MVT_2023-Annual-Report_Digital.pdf.pagespeed.ce.8gLcgJ--QC.pdf\">launched its 2023 Annual Report,<\/a> which highlights the important contribution that its members make to the UK economy while painting a stark picture of the challenges, such as rising rent demands and high energy costs, still facing the overwhelming number of live music spaces.<\/p>\n<p>With 125 GMVs shutting at the rate of two per week last year, this report throws into sharp focus the contrast between those companies and artists at the top end of the live music sector currently enjoying record revenues and profits, and the remaining Grassroots Music Venues, 38% of which reported a loss in 2023 despite an increased demand for tickets.<\/p>\n<p>A survey of the remaining 835 members of the <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.musicvenuetrust.com\/music-venues-alliance\/\" target=\"_blank\">Music Venues Alliance<\/a> (MVA), who employ over 28,000 people throughout the sector, found that they staged over 187,000 events in 2023, with 1.7m individual artist performances attracting audience visits of over 23.5m. However, despite generating over \u00a3500m in revenues, GMVs made just \u00a32.5m or 0.5% profit for the period.<\/p>\n<p>This report also details how, without a combination of grants and donations totalling \u00a33.1m from <strong>MVT<\/strong>\u2019s own <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.musicvenuetrust.com\/pipeline-investment-fund\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pipeline Investment Fund<\/a>, Arts Council England and other bodies, the whole sector would have operated at a loss during this period. In total the amount that GMVs are subsidising live music rose from \u00a379m in 2022 to \u00a3115m in 2023, an increase of \u00a336 million or 45% over the previous 12 months.<\/p>\n<p>With energy costs remaining high and rent increases averaging 37%, 164 member venues \u2013 particularly smaller venues or those in rural locations \u2013 accessed the <strong>MVT<\/strong> <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.musicvenuetrust.com\/venue-emergency-response\/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergency Response Service<\/a> which, for the first time since the organisation\u2019s launch a decade ago, found that the primary cause of venue closure was a lack of financial viability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grassroots music venues, which offer a vital launchpad for fledgling acts, risk closure, new research warns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}