While giant promoters rake in billions, smaller venues are struggling to make ends meet – even when gigs are selling out. We go on tour to find a glimmer of hope
It’s Sunday evening at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds and business appears to be booming. There is a blues festival in one of the two 400-capacity rooms and the rising US singer-songwriter Sam Evian in the other. The lounge between is packed with students watching Liverpool beat Chelsea on TV. However, the owner-promoter Nathan Clark is nervous: “The picture isn’t as rosy as it seems.”
Yesterday, for instance, he was all set to put on the Australian psych-rockers Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, who had pulled 1,000 people in Manchester the night before. “Then I got a call saying the singer had been bitten by a dog and the show was cancelled,” he says. “We had already installed a projector screen that cost £600, hired tech people and security and bought the band’s food and drink.” All that outlay cannot be recovered. “It’s like playing roulette.”
Putting on live music has always been a gamble, but the climate is particularly perilous for smaller venues, even without angry dogs. At stadium and arena level, concert giants such as Live Nation are hosting more fans than ever. Record-breaking tours from Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and others have swelled that multinational’s revenue to an astonishing $22.7bn (£17.8bn). Meanwhile, at the other end, 125 UK venues abandoned live music in 2023 – more than half of them closing for good – owing to pressures ranging from soaring rent and energy prices to the hangover of Covid.
The esteemed Moles club in Bath shut up shop in December after 45 years; other recent closures include Melodic Distraction in Liverpool and Velvet Music Rooms in Birmingham. The nightclub scene is imperilled – Rekom, which owns the Pryzm chain, is closing half its venues, blaming the cost of living crisis – and a number of major music festivals are postponing events this year or shutting down.
“It’s not just venues,” says Mark Davyd, the founder of the Music Venue Trust, which represents the grassroots sector. “Artists can’t afford to tour or are slashing their tours in half because they can’t afford to lose that amount of money. The whole ecosystem is collapsing.”