This week is a big week to reflect on the state of grassroots music in the UK but there was one corporate elephant who still hasn't turned up... plus this week's track of the week and some Aphex Twin news.
5 Things We Learned From Music Venue Trust's Annual Report Launch
On Tuesday evening, Sean and I headed to a rather elaborate wing of the Victoria & Albert Museum adorned with Raphaelite art for the launch of the Music Venue Trust's Annual Report 2025. (For context, the location was chosen ahead of the V&A's forthcoming exhibition on lost grassroots music venues, which opens in May).
The event offered an annual temperature check of the UK's grassroots sector, laying out in detail its main challenges and the measures being taken to safeguard as many independent live music spaces as possible.
During his speech, the charity's CEO Mark Davyd said this was the "least worst" report from this side of the pandemic.
The grassroots sector remains in a precarious state, least of all thanks to the Government's recent policies relating to business rates and National Insurance, but there's chinks of light coming through.
Some of the reports material is a surprise, some is not, but at the end of Davyd's rousing speech - frequently punctuated by cheers and whoops - I couldn't help but leave with hope.
Here are our five takeaways from the MVT's annual report...
There are more 'gig deserts' around the UK than you'd realise
If getting to a venue can take you a significant amount of time, you're not alone. 175 towns and cities no longer receive regular tours coming through, amounting to 35 million people who don't have much, if any, live music on their doorstep. It's testament to an unfortunate postcode lottery - and a reduction in opportunity for new talent.
The report says:
MVT’s analysis shows that 59% of GMVs – 475 venues – now operate with no major promoter activity, effectively severing them from the professional touring economy. This absence means that for a majority of venues, national tours no longer visit and local promoters lack the scale or resource to fill the gap. The consequences are stark: audiences in more than 175 towns and cities, representing a total population of 35 million people, no longer have access to a reliable supply of national touring artists.
Taxation policies are hurting venues
The increase in employer contributions to National Insurance and the reduction in business rates relief is cutting into venues' bank accounts, meaning the average profit margin is just 2.5% and just over half of venues didn't turn a profit at all in 2025. The report is also critical of the VAT rate on concert tickets, which at 20% is higher than elsewhere in Europe.
This also contributed to the loss of 6,000 jobs across the grassroots sector in 2025, amounting to a loss not just of labour but opportunity. "With no other option, venues were forced into a corner and forced to make a terrible decision none of them wanted to," Davyd said in his speech. "They cut the first rung of the ladder. The trainees. The junior sound engineers. The box office assistants. The casual staff learning how venues actually work.
"Those people didn’t just lose jobs. They lost routes in."
The moment is now for the grassroots levy - and are Live Nation standing in the way?
A deadline of 30th June 2026 has been set to see if implementing the £1 grassroots levy on a voluntary basis works. If it doesn't reach the threshold of 50% of arena & stadium shows contributing, statutory legislation "is not just inevitable, it would be justified".
Davyd praised promoters SJM, Kilimanjaro and AEG for "delivering", but he had stronger words for Live Nation. He said:
"These companies are delivering... Live Nation, you know, and the whole industry knows, you are not. If the voluntary levy fails, it will not be the fault of the companies who have already embraced it, or of Music Venue Trust, or of the government, or of any will to do it on behalf of individuals, artists, managers, agents, audiences or anyone else. It will be a direct consequence of the overwhelmingly dominant force in the arena and stadium market deciding not to deliver a voluntary levy. That’s your choice, Live Nation, and everyone in the industry hopes you make the right one."
So far, just 8.8% of arena and stadium tickets sold in 2025 had some version of the grassroots levy. Some of the artists implementing it include Wolf Alice, Frank Turner, Ed Sheeran, Stereophonics and Katy Perry.
Are non-profit venues the future?
In a positive development, 38% of venues are now being run as non-profit or community-owned organisations, a 15.4% increase on 2024. This is a great way to help them survive, protecting venues from being evicted by their landlords, while helping improve their access to grants and relationships with local authorities and reducing borrowing costs.
The MVT have been involved too, with its Music Venue Properties arm now looking to purchase nine more venues to bring them under community ownership.
We're still losing venues - but not quite as fast
The loss of any grassroots venue is devastating to the touring circuit and local community, but the numbers are now looking quite different from how they did a few years ago. 30 venues closed in 2025 and 48 stopped operating as grassroots music venues, while 69 new GMVs opened. This is the lowest number of venues lost in a year since 2018, and a sizeable decline from the moment in 2023 where 125 venues closed and it was warned the live circuit risked "going off a cliff" without urgent support.
What's next?
"We have reached the absolute limit of what goodwill can possibly absorb," Davyd warned in his speech, noting that "grassroots music venues have quietly carried problems that should never have been theirs to solve" from rising costs to the shrugs of the wider music industry. 2026 ought to bring a paradigm shift, one that the Government and wider industry do the same.
The next step to improve the grassroots music sector is to permanently fix some of its most permanent issues. There's plans for the MVT to help venues bring their costs down for good, through installing solar and battery systems to create a a carbon neutral energy model that also protects venues from spiraling energy bills. They're also working to provide better artist accommodation and better backstage facilities so bands expend less money on hotels (or dealing with the discomfort of sleeping in the van), as well as working with partners to bring better sound, lighting, backline, microphones and more to venues. Ambitious it is, but it's an exciting thought.
If you're in the UK and want to help grassroots music, why not check your local MP has read the report. You can quickly find your local MPs email here.
This host of 101 Part Time Jobs is on our pod
We've got a great crossover of worlds on the podcast this week with Sean speaking to 101 Part Time Jobs host and all-round legend Giles Bidder. They sat down to discuss the power of human curation, the reality of podcasting in 2026 and what it takes to make music journalism work - as well as why he doesn't "trust anyone in a punk band who wasn't in a ska band 20 years ago".
This week's pod is audio-only, subscribe and listen for free on Apple | Podbean | Pocket Casts | Podcast Addict | or wherever you get your podcasts.
Talking of Giles...
Witch Fever are the latest guests on 101 Part Time jobs and the comments by vocalist Amy Walpole and bassist Alex Thompson about the true costs of being in a band have gained considerable traction - and provided some food for thought. Despite playing arenas for two months across the UK and Europe supporting Volbeat, their profits were stuck in withholding taxes across the continent. Because they're on tour again in March, they can't get jobs, and Walpole admitted she was living off a portion of her late mother's pension, who died not long before the tour started.
Hidden fees, taxes, ever-rising costs - the balance sheet for touring bands is a bleak read. It's a broken system, but the way to help, of course, is with your wallet by buying merch and gig tickets, the further in advance the better. And, of course, go and listen to Witch Fever. What a brilliant band.
Liberty Dunworth
Track of the Week
'human props' by Static Dress
Disposable culture, overproduction, dancing for the algorithm - Static Dress reject it all, in favour of a proud DIY mindset and towering songwriting. The Leeds post-hardcore quartet have returned with a totemic new single fusing stratospheric melodies and slicing riffs with razor-edged heaviness, indirectly invoking the sounds of the 2000s emo goldrush.
They're one of UK alternative music's most driven bands, with vocalist Olli Appleyard masterminding all of their videos and designing their merch, and their only UK headline show last year was at the new venue Riff Factory in Stoke-on-Trent that drummer Sam Ogden helped build. This band means everything to me - and with all those things considered, I believe they epitomise what Drowned In Sound is about.
Hopeful story
Aphex Twin smashes the Swiftopoly on YouTube
I don't know about you, but I'm slightly sick of the cultural money-guzzling dominance of Taylor Swift. As such, it is kind of satisfying to see Aphex Twin's monthly YouTube listens soar beyond Swift's to the tune of tens of millions thanks to the virality of his 2001 hit 'QKThr', used often in memes and edits relating to the internet. Its use in fan-generated content has also helped it clock up more listeners due to how YouTube's metrics work. Perhaps Swifties aren't the most powerful fanbase in music after all?
As part of our partnership with Qobuz - the service for music enthusiasts featuring high quality sound so that we can rediscover music - we create a companion playlist for each episode of our podcast. Listen to this week's playlist, which is a 101 Part Time Jobs special with tunes from Peaches, The National, and kicking things off is our track of the week
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