Grassroots Music & Grassroots venues

Submission by MMF & FAC

For many years artists have had to be supported to tour. Even back in the ‘glory days’ of the 90s when the recorded music business and grassroots live music circuit was at its height, many bands touring lost money and were subsidised by tour support paid by the labels (which comes out of future royalties which is why so many spent decades ‘unrecouped’).

In the past, artists putting in long hours performing night-after-night, on what some pejoratively called the ‘toilet circuit’, was seen as the way to build an audience and the route to success.  So many artists have come through this route and are grateful to the venues who hosted them in the early days.

Huge cost inflation and a challenging economic climate and a lack of tour support have in recent years make grassroots touring increasingly inviable. Independent artists often need to fund their own touring for many years to try to get to the size of venue where income covers costs.  Support artists frequently bemoan the £50 support fee which has been unchanged in 25 years.

As highlighted by MVT's Mark Davyd in a recent Guardian feature: “It’s not just venues 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.”

Most young people have relatively easy access to online culture and sports, but live music is often both prohibitively expensive or - due to licensing conditions - prohibitive full stop. While football clubs do everything in their power to get kids through the turnstiles, there are significant barriers to U18s getting past the door at live venues

Understandably, since the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a long overdue and very necessary conversation about artist-friendly reforms of streaming. However, that conversation cannot take place in isolation. Most artists build their business around live music and recordings - the two are indelibly linked and, Ideally, form something of a virtuous circle. They should feed and nourish each other.

Economics of grassroots touring

It is expensive to tour - the costs all add up.  Artists first invest heavily before going out on tour through their time recording, promoting the music and the shows, creating content for social media and rehearsing.  Then there are the direct costs of touring that fall to the artist such as the crew (tour manager, lighting engineer), production, accommodation, travel, subsistence.

There is also a value to the wider live music sector of all the people paid for and supported by artists touring including; the venues themselves, the booking agent, promoter and music manager (who only earns if the artist makes a profit).   In the Appendix you can see outlines of seven grassroots tours which pay salaries for many people, although often not the artist themselves who tours at a loss.

With the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people resting on artist’s shoulders, this is an absolutely critical conversation and critical to grassroots music and the wider music industry.

Quite simply, artists are the biggest employers in live music and live music is at the core of most artist’s businesses. If they cannot tour sustainably, then our entire sector is in jeopardy.

Developing Audiences

All artists have a need to develop new audiences and understand the changing dynamics of the younger audiences, who drink less and buy tickets later.   Right now there is disparity in those artists who are growing audiences via their recorded music on socials and their subsequent ability to tour. 

The pandemic demonstrated to executives that the recorded music industry could maintain catalogue income without this loss-making expenditure.  Some TikTok artists (e,g PinkPatheress) obtained global audiences without having to significantly tour first and found themselves catapulted into the fast lane. This also changes the incentives for labels to invest in costly tour support (although for some genres notably Rock/Indie it is still seen as the main route to build an audience).

For some solo artists it can be easier to make ends meet as costs are lower (there is a reason that Ed Sheeran is so successful, as he played 1000s of grassroots shows with his loop pedal alone honing his craft with very low costs).

But many solo artists want to perform with a live band who need to be paid fair fees for performing nightly, and because their music is best experienced in this manner.  These costs stack up as the band rightly earns on a daily fee but the artist seeks deeper and deeper into a loss.  If costs are unviable and tours are cancelled then it’s not just the artist who suffers but the crew, musicians and audiences and venues who depend on them.

FAC ambassador, Murray Matravers from the band formerly known as Easy Life, summed up the situation perfectly in a Q&A with NME’s Andrew Trendall - 

Easy Life had already cancelled shows in Europe and the US for financial reasons, but, despite headlining Alexandra Palace in 2023, Murray revealed the band were also having to reconsider the approach to UK touring. ‘We’re having to think about a whole new way of touring [because it] just isn’t financially sustainable at all’.

What needs to happen

We know grassroots venues are also struggling to remain open (in fact many have closed) due to spiralling costs. The whole grassroots infrastructure of music is critical to the UK’s future musical success and is at risk without timely intervention and support. 

We support MVT’s call for a grassroots touring fund administered by a third party (possibly LIVE) to support the whole grassroots music sector. Many larger artists have given their backing to a levy (Enter Shikari introducing a voluntary one).   We need to ensure that any fund is fairly contributed to by the biggest players and supports both the infrastructure, the audiences and the musicians without whom there is no music.

Following the football analogy, we need to ensure that all music makers and their audiences have equal access to what are effectively the playing fields of music, regardless of geography, genre or background. 

We urge the Select Committee to ensure that there is support for preserving both the essential infrastructure of grassroots venues and the artists who tour in them via a grassroots touring fund.   This is essential to the future of British music and culture not just within the UK but globally.

Appendix : 7 budgets of grassroots artist touring from headline to support tours all around the UK

Pls note only one of these tours makes a small profit for the artist for a whole month on the road.  In some cases there are cut backs you can make to balance the books better ie no photographer/cut down crew/band drive themselves/sleep on floors which regularly happens and merch sales can help make tours break even but that really depends on the audience and is not guaranteed so not included in the budgets.

Tour 1

6 date UK tour

250 - 600 capacity venues

4 piece band no additional musicians

Tour 2

8 date UK tour

200 - 950 capacity venues

4 piece band no additional musicians

Tour 3

5 date UK support tour

200 - 600 capacity venues

4 piece band no additional musicians

Tour 4

2 date UK tour

50 - 300 capacity venues

Solo artist performing with 5/9 piece band

Tour 5

29 date UK tour

400 - 1,300 capacity venues

Solo artist performing with 1 additional musician

Tour 6

1 off headline gig

300 capacity venue

3 piece band with session drummer

About MMF and FAC

The FAC is the UK trade body representing the specific rights and interests of music artists. We are a not-for-profit organisation, serving a diverse, global membership of creators at all stages of their careers.

Having been formed in 2009 by pioneering artists including Billy Bragg, Sandie Shaw, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, the FAC's current Board of Directors represents some of the most recognised names in the music world with the likes of Wolf Alice’s Joff Oddie, Imogen Heap, Katie Melua, Howard Jones and Blur's David Rowntree as the organisation's Artist in Residence. 

The FAC is a founding member of the International Artist Organisation, the Council of Music Makers (CMM) and Live Music Industry Venues & Entertainment (LIVE), and a member body of UK Music.

The MMF is the world’s largest professional community of music managers.

Since its inception in 1992, the MMF has worked hard to educate, inform and represent UK managers as well as offering a network through which managers can share experiences, opportunities and information.

Our membership stands at over 1500 managers based in the UK with global businesses and a wider network of managers globally.

The MMF engages, advises and lobbies industry associates and the wider industry on issues that are relevant to managers. We continue to recruit members and grow our network so we are truly representative of the wider management community.

The MMF is a founding member of UK Music, the European Music Managers Alliance (EMMA), the Council of Music Makers (CMM) and Live Music Industry Venues & Entertainment (LIVE).

In 2022 we published the Essentials of Music Management book, and updated our 2nd edition in 2023.

We also co-host the annual Artist and Manager Awards with our sister organisation the Featured Artists Coalition.

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