Music Venues In Crisis According To BBC Report

Sad news for singers all over the country. Jeff Horton, owner of London’s 100 Club has told the BBC the closure of venues up and down the country has left the nation’s live music scene ‘crisis’. A plethora of live venues across the UK have been forced to close their doors in recent years. Some have struggled to stay afloat on account of financial issues, while others have been forced out of business by stringent noise restrictions.

According to Horton, the closure of so many live music venues could pose a significant threat to the future of new music in the UK. “Without places like the 100 Club and other grassroots venues, where are tomorrow’s headline acts going to come from?” he asked. “You can’t keep churning out the same old acts, which you can already see is happening.”

Horton’s warning follow’s a report published this week by the Mayor of London’s Music Venue Taskforce, which looks at how other grassroots venues can avoid the same fate as those that have closed. In the report, the taskforce calls for a revised approach to the way people think about music venues. “Grassroots music venues are cultural spaces, risk-takers, hubs of innovation and place-makers, says the report. “They need to be recognised as such in policy documents. Music venues also need to enter the day-to-day conversations of economists, planners, licensers, police, tourism experts, culture professionals and music industry decision makers.

“Between 2007 and 2015, London lost 35% of its grassroots music venues, a decline from 136 spaces programming new artists to just 88 remaining today. Iconic names like the Marquee Club, the Astoria, the 12 Bar Club and Madame Jojo’s disappeared from the map. Those venues were big players in the music history of London, they fed the UK’s £3.8 billion music industry with a stream of talented acts and they were part of the international story of “Brand Britain”.”