Bath Moles: Established with love 1978. Closed by music industry neglect 2023.

Bath Moles is an iconic, landmark venue, vital to the health of the UK live scene. It's closure represents an abject failure by the live music industry to listen and act.

45 years after it first opened its doors, today, effectively immediately, the legendary grassroots music venue Moles in Bath will permanently close.

The loss of any grassroots music venue in any part of the country is a disaster for the local community. It strips away aspiration, opportunity, engagement and ambition. It says to a young local musician that there is no point in even thinking about a career in music; that’s made by other people in other places. It sends a message to the local community that live music is not for them, doesn’t belong in their place. Over the last ten years Music Venue Trust has had to work with many communities to try and bring live music back to their village, town and city. Once a venue closes, it’s incredibly hard to get a new one off the ground. It’s expensive to create, suitable buildings are hard to find, and licences that provide the possibility of an economically viable business are almost impossible to obtain outside of any major city.

The closure of Bath Moles, and what it tells us about the state of the grassroots music venue sector, is more than that.

Across 45 years, Moles has provided a home to literally tens of thousands of musicians. It’s been an absolute cornerstone of the touring circuit, hosting national tours for a litany of bands that if we even tried to list them would overwhelm this statement. The booking policy is one of the best in the country, continuously spotting, promoting and developing new young artists from an incredible range of genres. The management of its finances and accounts is an exemplar of best practice. The team that run it have fought back against threat after threat, surviving not only the pandemic but a fire that destroyed the inside of the premises. Every time, somehow, they found a way to carry on. It’s a live music institution, as emblematic of the importance of grassroots music venues as The 100 Club, Clwb Ifor Bach, Oh Yeah Music Centre, or King Tuts. This is a landmark venue for any hopeful artist, part of the rite of passage for anyone with their eyes fixed on a future as an arena, stadium and festival headliner. Radiohead. Ed Sheeran. Fatboy Slim. Blur. Killers. Whichever headline act you find yourself in front of at a festival next year, you can be pretty sure that somewhere on their journey to that stage they put their feet on the Moles stage.

All of that history, and all of that promise and the potential for the future, ends today.

It’s important that everyone understands exactly why Bath Moles is closing. There shouldn’t be any conjecture, or claims that perhaps it could be run differently, or somehow better, or perhaps a one=off fundraiser might just save it one more time. No maybe this, no maybe that. Bath Moles is closing because right now, in 2023, it simply isn’t possibly to present original live music in a 220-capacity venue without losing money. Live events at Moles are well attended, the prices are realistic, the number and range of shows is among the best in the country. And that, the core business of a grassroots music venue, loses money. The presentation of live original music has been losing money for years. Grassroots Music Venues like Moles have done everything they can to made it work, first by pumping bar sales money into the live music, then by adding club revenue to that. They’ve invested every penny that could be raised from every aspect of the business into trying to keep live music going. And finally, in 2023, not even that is enough.

MVT has been telling the music industry this for years. In 2018, prior to the pandemic, we told the largest companies and the most senior organisations in the live music industry that grassroots music venues could not afford to shoulder the burden of research and development of new artists on their own. We said it again all the way through 2019, and again all the way through the pandemic. In October 2022 we announced publicly that the economics of live music in grassroots music venues wasn’t sustainable, and the industry would have to act. In January this year we launched our Annual Report in Parliament, and we told the gathered MPs and key industry stakeholders that the whole sector was on a cliff edge. Without action, we told them, we would see hundreds of venues topple over that edge taking opportunities for future talent with them.

125 venues are already gone this year. And now Bath Moles is closed.

It’s easy at these times to feel that this is a hopeless situation, and we might as well just give in to the relentless tide of ever rising ticket prices at an increasing number of huge arena shows that if you’re lucky you get to see once or twice a year. The live music industry is having its best year ever while the grassroots on which all its successes are built is rotting away beneath it. The truth is that the solution to stopping any more iconic venues closing is simple. It’s achievable, it’s easy, it can be done, and it will have to be done.

Bath Moles can’t be saved by a Crowdfunder or a benevolent millionaire. That’s a short-term solution to a long term, permanent problem. The whole industry knows and accepts that we must have spaces like Moles for artists of the future, but these spaces cannot afford to carry on delivering R&D to create and support new artists on their own.

For five years now Music Venue Trust has been trying to get the live music industry itself to act on these challenges. We have proposed a simple £1 charge on every arena and stadium ticket sold should be put into a fund to financially support venues like Moles so they can afford to programme and develop the artists of the future. We’ve laid out exactly how such a fund would work and demonstrated that it can be done. With sincere thanks to all those companies and individuals who have supported us in that work and joined us in those calls, regrettably too much of the industry has simply looked in the other direction and considered it to be someone else’s problem.

We have been very reluctant to call for the government to take action to force the music industry to meet its responsibilities to grassroots artists and venues. We honestly, even now, believe that the much better, more effective, solution is for the live music industry to take control of this and do it ourselves. But the closure of Bath Moles is a point in the road of this journey where we have to admit that this approach has failed. Enough, sadly, is enough.

We have today written to the government and to the opposition to insist that in the seemingly unavoidable event that the music industry will not act, a compulsory levy on every ticket sold for every live music event above 5,000 capacity that takes place in the UK must be introduced by legislation.

An existing scheme such as this is already in operation in France, with all live music events compelled by law to pay 3.5% of the cover price of a ticket into a fund to support French grassroots artists and French venues. All international companies operating in France, including those who are registered in the UK, pay this levy without complaint. Every British promoter operating in France, every British artist performing in France, every British agency booking acts into France, accommodates this levy within their costing of every show. You read that correctly. When your favourite British artist is booked into a French stadium by their British agent and promoted by a British promoter, 3.5% of the face value of every ticket they sell goes into a fund to make sure that French venues, venues just like Bath Moles, can access the financial support they need to invest in French artists, French staff and French buildings.     

We have honestly tried. If the live music industry will not listen to reason and act in its own best interests to protect UK grassroots music venues and artists, the UK government must act to compel them to do so.     

Everyone owes a huge debt of gratitude to the team at Moles for keeping going as long as they possibly could. They have done everything in their power to try to keep music alive in Bath.

It is now time for others to act.