Artists can now apply for the UK Artist Touring (UKAT) fund to cover shortfalls in their upcoming tours.
As music fans, this is how your money is being spent if you've contributed £1 to the grassroots levy when buying a ticket to a contributing show that's over 5000 capacity.
With that in mind, we wanted to go quite deep about how fans' money is being spent on this week's podcast because - as regular listeners will know - I have a lot of questions about how our cash is spent on solutions to a myriad of issues, especially in live music.
We'd love it if you could forward this to the musicians in your life who might find this of interest as they only have until 23:59pm on Sunday 22nd March 2026 to apply for upto £7000.
Mostly, we think this week's podcast is a really honest and open listen about the crisis in live music. The clarity and humanising of the mess things are in comes from the wonderful Roxanne de Bastion - whose devastatingly beautiful music is full of wit, science, and humanity - sharing what it's really like out on the road right now.
If you tune in to the pod, you'll also meet David Martin, the CEO of the Featured Artist Coalition, who explains more about the UKAT fund (run in association with Music Managers Forum & Musicians’ Union) (Naomi Pohl from MU was the first guest on our podcast, 3 years ago) and what the thousands of pounds can and can't be used for.
One thing I'm kicking myself for not asking is whether the money will be used for tours promoted by Live Nation. As Emma discussed last week, the live music behemoth that also owns Ticketmaster, are really dragging their feet with supporting the voluntary levy. It's this £1 on stadium and arena gigs by everyone from Harry Styles and Katy Perry to Iron Maiden and Biffy Clyro that feeds into the Live Trust, that went into this support for grassroots music. With this in mind, I will be curious to see who is awarded the funding...
Grassroots Levy Supporting Artists: On this week's podcast companion playlist, we celebrate some of the artists whose shows have contributed £1 per ticket to support the UK's Grassroots Levy to help artists, promoters and venues not just survive but thrive.
Aside from this UKAT fund, the rest of the half a million from phase one of Live Trust's funding has gone toward the following initatives:
- Micro & Very Small Festivals Development Programme delivered by the Association of Independent Festivals
- Independent Promoters Grassroots Bursary Scheme delivered by the Association of Independent Promoters
- Music Venue Support delivered by Music Venue Trust
- Volume Control Enhanced delivered by Oh Yeah Centre, Belfast
- Music Futures delivered by Production Futures
- Developing Scotland's Emerging Live Sector delivered by Wide Events
Listen To The Podcast
If you're not already subscribed to our podcast speaking to musicians and campaigners who illuminating solutions for fixing music and society, you can search for "Drowned in Sound" on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We also post video clips from episodes on our social channels and YouTube.
DiS Support
Apply for UKAT Funding
Helena Coma