one in four late-night venues, including clubs, have closed since 2020, with closures accelerating this year<\/a> \u2013 and emerging artists struggling to make a living, the report noted that stadiums and arenas were the major beneficiaries of the increase, thanks to high-profile gigs by the likes of Swift, Dua Lipa and Charli xcx.<\/p>\nLive analysed 55,000 gigs, concerts, festivals and events, and found that mainstream pop gigs accounted for 32.1% of consumer spend across the top 2,000 concerts of the year, a year-on-year increase of 4.7 percentage points. It flagged that the grassroots crisis extends beyond venues and artists to include promoters and festivals.<\/p>\n
Live music expenditure also remained heavily concentrated in the capital, with London accounting for 28.9% of all 2024 outlay, although Manchester experienced a bump thanks to the opening of the new Co-op Live arena. The UK\u2019s festivals and concerts attracted more than 23.5 million music tourists in 2024.<\/p>\n
Concerts took a 75.3% share of live music spending, up almost two percentage points since 2023. The smaller share for festivals reflects the difficulties faced by that sector amid high-cost inflation \u2013 and the challenge to compete with major single-day concerts by the likes of Swift and Bruce Springsteen that force consumers to make decisions over how to prioritise their budget for live music. Live backed the widespread industry recommendation that the government should introduce tax relief to enable festivals to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a clear role for government, given that its stewardship of the economy will determine our trading environment and audience confidence,\u201d said Live chief executive Jon Collins.<\/p>\n
The live music sector employed more than 234,000 people in the UK in 2024, a 2.2% year-on-year increase \u2013 albeit one with low job security: 78.8% of these workers are casual or freelance. Short-notice cancellation of events put these fragile livelihoods at risk: 48% of respondents reported having jobs cancelled at less than a week\u2019s notice.<\/p>\n
Live was established in 2024 to support the work of the Music Venue Trust and to help develop a funding programme in which arena and stadium shows with a capacity of more than 5,000 could voluntarily add a \u00a31 levy to ticket prices, creating a fund to support grassroots music venues. In July, the Royal Albert Hall in London became the first arena to commit to the programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith trustees now appointed and commitments already secured from a number of high-profile artists performing stadium and arena shows throughout 2025 and 2026 the Live Trust is confident it can soon begin offering financial support where it is needed,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
It defines its mission to \u201cempower\u201d the UK music industry as one of kickstarting economic growth, breaking down barriers to opportunity, making the industry safer \u2013 targeting worker precarity, harassment and terrorist attempts on live music events \u2013 and focusing on environmental sustainability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK consumer spending on live music events reached a record-breaking total of \u00a36.68bn in 2024, up 9.5% on the previous year, fuelled in part by Taylor Swift\u2019s blockbuster Eras tour. The report from Live (Live music Industry Venues and Entertainment), the recently formed body advocating for the British music industry\u2019s interests before government, signals a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1994450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1994449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Taylor-Swifts-Eras-tour-helps-fuel-UK-consumer-spending-on.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1994449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1994450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1994449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1994449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1994449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}