Back in Session, Still Off-Key
What the CMS Committee Got Right - and Why We Still Aren't Anywhere Near Doing Enough
On Tuesday 13 May the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee reconvened to check in on the state of grassroots music. Last year’s report was widely welcomed, but a year on, the message from the hearing was clear: while the talking has continued, the doing has not.
The original urgency of their report, and the hope it created that slowed venue closures in 2023, is slipping. We are now back to losing one grassroots venue a week. That’s not just a statistic - it’s a hole torn out of the fabric of the UK’s music infrastructure every seven days. Let’s consider where we, and particularly the Government, find ourselves after that CMS Select Committee hearing.
From Applause to Action: What Has (and Hasn’t) Happened
There was consensus in the room - again - about the challenges. But consensus doesn’t save venues. At the hearing, I highlighted that the rise in business rates alone has stripped £7 million from the sector since April. The change to National Insurance thresholds means thousands of venue staff now cost more to employ, pushing venues further towards insecure, freelance workers. VAT remains stubbornly high at 20% - the highest rate on live music of any major music market. The Government is moving in the opposite direction on the right of Statutory Consultation on Planning Applications, not only not appointing someone to do that for music venues but actively thinking about taking away the right to do it from theatres and sports. Similarly on Agent of Change, despite the positive noises from the Minister, the push is away from protecting what we have in favour of building whatever we can. And finally, on the fan-led review the Minister announced he was his own ‘one man fan led review’ - a point of view which I am sure was greeted enthusiastically by the millions of people who go to see live music every week whose views, apparently, the Minister isn’t that interested in.
In short, while we’re losing talent and spaces, the Treasury seems unable to stop themselves from extracting money from the bits of the industry that can least afford it, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government is pushing to ignore the existence of music venues entirely, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport seem completely powerless to ask them to take a different approach.
We also discussed the levy - that £1 charge on tickets at major shows to fund grassroots music. Since the government’s response in November 2024 to last year’s report, around 6 million arena and stadium tickets have gone on sale. Just 8% have included the levy. If we continue at this rate of growth in application, we won’t reach full coverage until 2032 - and whatever we do we won’t have raised a pound that’s reached a venue before 2026.
This is the critical issue. We have a potentially transformational funding mechanism allied to sensible, deliverable, desirable and achievable policies - but none of it is being implemented at anything like the speed or scale required. Or, more worryingly in most cases, at all.
A Note on the Levy: What These Words Actually Mean
There’s been a lot of confusion and cross-talk around the levy - not helped by inconsistent language. So let’s set it out clearly:
Blanket means every eligible ticket - arena and stadium shows - includes the levy. No exceptions.
Voluntary means it’s not required by law. It’s up to the parties involved - the promoter, the agent, the manager, the venue, the ticketing company and the artist - to do everything they can to make sure it is included.
Mandatory means everyone in the industry agrees to implement it in all cases, regardless of who's involved - this word can be applied with or without legal enforcement.
Statutory means legislation to compel the levy, with legal consequences for non-compliance.
A blanket voluntary levy, is, on paper, the ideal solution. It avoids legislative delays, retains industry ownership, and still delivers universal coverage. But - and this is the crucial point - it only works if the industry treats it like it’s mandatory. That means senior figures, promoters, agents, managers, arenas, stadiums, ticketing companies and, yes, the artists themselves all need to act as though it is non-negotiable. Until that happens, it will remain patchy, slow, and ultimately ineffective. And if its ineffective the only possible alternative outcome is a Mandatory Statutory Levy.
I made this point clearly at the hearing: when a show doesn’t include the levy, we shouldn’t just accept it. We should be asking, why not? Who didn’t speak up for it? What didn’t happen in the chain of decision-making? What has gone wrong on this event that we can put right on the next one?
Grassroots Isn’t Just Artists - It's a Whole Ecosystem
At the hearing, I was joined on my panel by three colleagues from different parts of the Council of Music Makers, an umbrella organisation that most people, even in the industry, lack awareness of. The focus of their representatives, understandably, was on artists - their losses, their risks, their careers. I tried to use my time to make the case that while everyone accepts that without artists none of this is happening, grassroots music is not just about the person on stage.
Promoters - particularly at the grassroots level - were notably absent from the panel. This is a gap I tried, possibly unsuccessfully, to fill on their behalf, raising the need to support these independent risk-takers who, night after night, take chances on new talent in small rooms for marginal returns or, more likely, losses. As I pointed out, if we don’t fund promoters and venues, we are not funding the ecosystem properly and as a result could end up funding artists in a manner that is least likely to have the most impact. These three elements, venues, promoters, artists, are inseparable.
A grassroots artist can’t tour without somewhere to play. They can’t build an audience without someone to put the show on and tell people about it. And venues can’t stay open and promoters cannot stay in business if they’re expected to subsidise the ecosystem through beer sales and hope.
We have known this since we started this campaign for a Grassroots Levy back in 2018. All three elements of the grassroots ecosystem will need to be funded in order to restore it to health. At some point in the last two years a misleading narrative that Music Venue Trust was pursuing the levy only for venues emerged. That’s never been the case, and it never will be, because that simply won’t work. The reality is that I, personally, was the first person on public record saying that artists will need funding from this source. 2019, you can run the fact check yourself. My own, and Music Venue Trust’s, messaging on this has never changed; the funding needs to support venues, promoters, and artists.
Where further work is needed is on how any funding is distributed, work that needs to be done robustly by the LIVE Trust. When it comes to tackling the ‘cost of touring crisis’ referred to in the CMS Select Committee hearing, however, we need to be clear about one thing: Whatever interventions are proposed, whoever receives whatever money, tackling that crisis has to be done in such a way that other parts of the ecosystem are simultaneously recognised, valued, and funded. Proposals to distribute the money will have to address how they aim to achieve that.
Music Venue Trust’s own experience of funding artists (over £4 million in the last few years via our Revive Live and United by Music projects) quickly developed so that venues and promoters also had their costs met when we funded artists to go out on tour. Our practical experience of actual delivering funding to tackle the costs of touring for artists very quickly demonstrated that it simply doesn’t work unless you also subsidise the venue costs and work with promoters to keep them involved and bring their experience and skills to the table.
Simply giving artists money to pay for rehearsals, put petrol in the van, food in their stomachs, and bed down at a Travelodge is a noble cause in and of itself. But it isn’t going to make successful shows suddenly start happening in Sunderland, Ayr, Worcester, Yeovil, Ashford, Bangor or anywhere else where local audiences are crying out for live music and simply not being serviced.
The Financial Logic Hole at the Heart of Policy
The really perverse part is this: While leaning heavily on the industry to get behind the Grassroots Levy and raise money to support venues, promoters, and artists, the Government has, in effect, removed around £22 million from the grassroots sector this year - between the £7 million rise in business rates and the £15 million knock-on effects of NIC changes. It’s quite a startling and sobering fact to realise that this is the exact same amount that the government hopes to eventually raise annually via the levy - based on just over 22.5 million tickets being on sale this year and each one generating £1 to support the Grassroots Ecosystem.
You read that correctly. Even if we achieved 100% levy uptake tomorrow, we’d just be back where we started thanks to the Government’s own policies. And as I warned in the session, unless we begin assessing the levy’s progress quarterly - not annually - we risk spending another year treading water, watching venues close, artists cancel tours, and entire regions lose access to live music, until we wake up in January 2026 and say ‘wait a minute… do we still not have a blanket voluntary levy to stop all this?’.
Is There a Plan - or Just Punchlines?
Chris Bryant, the Minister for Creative Industries, was engaging, informed, and clearly cares about music. But he also opened his remarks with a run of music puns and light jokes - which, while delivered with charm, left me wondering whether there’s a deeper issue of tone here.
We’re not asking for witty intros. We’re asking for emergency structural intervention. And while I support any Minister who wants to take action, I can’t help but ask: does this government - and does this department - really grasp the urgency of what’s happening to the live music sector in this country?
There was talk of a 10-point plan, talk of commitment, and talk of collaboration. But we need deadlines, specifics, and policy. When this 10-point plan finally emerges, will it be cutting stupid taxes, reducing legislation, and, finally, investing serious money into infrastructure?
The Government currently invests £1.6 million a year in the Music Export Growth Scheme, a very wise and intelligent investment that supports somewhere in the region of 60 artists to tour internationally. It invests… checks notes… bugger all protecting the cultural infrastructure in our towns and cities that allows those artists to build their careers to the point where they might be exportable. Even the Community Ownership Fund, which delivered that investment (albeit at a small scale) under the last government is currently closed and we have no idea when or if it will reopen. Meanwhile, actual communities who care about access to culture are left trying to defend it themselves via projects like Own Our Venues. The Creative Sector Review is apparently focused on opportunities for capital investment to provoke growth. Is that going to be actual investment in the facilities that people love in their local communities, or are the government going to fall into the same trap of the last fifty years and simply build another set of shining palaces of high art, beacons on a hillside too far away, and too expensive, for most people to ever get to?
One Final Point: This Is Not Charity
Supporting grassroots music is not some warm, nostalgic gesture. It’s not a "good cause" in the way that people might perceive building tunnels under motorways to save hedgehogs might be. It’s an economic imperative.
As I said clearly to the Committee: this is research and development for one of the UK’s few globally competitive industries. The fact that we've now dropped out of the global top 10 for singles, albums, and streaming charts should be a klaxon. You don’t get another Adele, another Arctic Monkeys, or another Ed Sheeran if the conditions to develop them disappear.
And that’s where Chris Bryant and the DCMS must act. Not by commissioning another glossy review. Not by offering up encouraging soundbites and pushing responsibility down the supply chain. But by restoring business rate relief, reducing VAT on grassroots gigs, fixing the broken planning system, and investing in the infrastructure that makes British music what it is.
If we really believe our cultural output is a national asset, we need to start treating it like one - not as a liability to be taxed and trimmed.
Read the full transcript of the Select Committee hearing HERE
Leave a comment below with your own thoughts about it.
Political action is seductive, but it’s also exhausting. I’m not saying it’s the wrong strategy; it isn’t. It can bear fruit. But it’s a long, brutal grind. Just look at Mr. Bates (vs the Post Office). They made a miniseries about the guy, and he’s still getting shafted. And that’s considered a success story. Political action is inherently slow and precarious because it relies on changing the very institutions designed to resist change. You’re appealing to power, trying to shame it into accountability… and power doesn’t embarrass easily.
Direct action, by contrast, doesn’t ask for permission—it gets things done. But the problem with direct action is that it’s almost always piecemeal. One campaign for X, another for Y, launched with urgency but without a cohesive long-term strategy, or the infrastructure to sustain it. There’s rarely a plan for how campaigns interlock, scale, or persist. As a result, direct action can feel futile—not because it is—but because so much of it gets lost in the noise. We remember the rare wins, but forget the dozens of fizzled efforts that left no trace.
If we want to win, we need to understand what winning looks like. And we need to study those who’ve mastered it. I’m not a Marxist—and I’ve got very little time for Marxists—but if I wanted to beat capitalism at its own game, I’d start by reading Marx. Not business self-help books on ‘10X Growth.’ Understand the system, not just the slogans.
I’m not saying Marx was a winner—he was plainly a bit of a loser. The winner in that anecdote is capitalism, and Marx just happens to be the only person who properly documented how it actually works.
Now, take the Tories. I don’t like them—not as individuals necessarily, but as a class. But you know what I admire about them? They stick together. That’s class solidarity. And they wield it ruthlessly. That’s how they divide and rule. The rest of us try to organise one protest, one petition, one funding drive at a time. They’ve got permanent institutions. We’ve got temporary outbursts.
Grassroots music venues (GMVs) are a perfect case study. As a class, we collectively control something that agents, artists, and audiences need. And yet, we barely leverage that power. Yes, GMV owners show a kind of solidarity… but it’s usually disaster solidarity. The ship’s going down, and we’re helping each other bail water. Noble? Yes. Strategic? Not really.
That’s not how the Tories operate. Their solidarity is based on ownership. They control the land, the leases, the licensing. They hold the means of access to everything from pubs to politics. That’s material power. That’s how you win.
Agents are another example. I’m not particularly fond of them either. They don’t own anything physical—unless you count exclusive access to artists as a kind of intellectual real estate. But what they do have is industry-wide solidarity. They enforce it through “standards”—fees, terms, demands. And because they all hold the line, we usually cave. One GMV refuses? Fine. They take the tour elsewhere.
Meanwhile, we—the ones with actual infrastructure—are taking orders from the people who rent access to talent. We do it because they act in unison, and we don’t.
Why? Because we’ve been programmed to think we’re competitors. That might make sense if we were all for-profit businesses in the private sector. But most of us aren’t. We’re either non-profits, or just barely keeping the lights on. Yet we compete like McDonald’s franchises.
What we should be is a cooperative cartel: non-profits working together in the third sector. I’m not talking about vibes-based collectivism. I mean commercial coordination with strategic teeth. I mean ganging up. Acting like a class. Leveraging collective control to rewrite the terms.
That’s not utopian. That’s just not dystopian. And there’s a crucial difference.
Some will say this sounds like socialism. Fair enough. But I’d argue that socialism isn’t what most people think it is.
Socialism, at its core, is just bottom-up class solidarity. It’s using the same trick the Tories use… but in reverse. It’s the rest of us recognising that we, too, can close ranks. That we can refuse to undercut one another. That we can standardise our demands, not just cave to theirs.
We need to build that solidarity now—not instead of political or direct action, but alongside them. A third pillar. Because when bottom-up class solidarity is real and organised, both political and direct action become exponentially more effective.