Last week, DiS' Emma Wilkes kicked a hornet's nest with her article about how hard it is for music fans to know what time gigs start and - perhaps more crucially - finish.
The response to the guessing game piece has been fascinating with fans around the world sharing their frustrations about the lack of info (excluding people in Belgium who say showtimes are a standard. Plus they have delicious beer and probably nice frites available at the bar...) and also a lot of gripes about the lack of public transport after gigs finish.
One of the responses to our article is well worth a read, it's from Mark Davyd, the CEO of the Music Venues Trust, who you may know as one of the driving forces pushing for the £1 levy on arena and stadium tickets to support grassroots music.
Mark Davyd
If you missed Emma's article, you can read it here:
Emma Wilkes
Join The Conversation
You'll find more responses to this piece and conversations to join over on the Drowned in Sound forums, Reddit /indieheads, Bluesky, Threads, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Fan-Led Review of Music: The Survey
We know lots of you have strong opinions, and as we discussed on a recent audio-only episode of the Drowned in Sound podcast from SWN Festival, the UK government is holding a fan-led review of live and electronic music, and they really want to hear from you.
📝 Set a reminder to spend 10 mins making your feelings known here.
Related Listen
One of the reasons why timings of shows feels important to discuss is because we are hearing from artists and promoters that turnout for shows is still down on what it was before Covid. We're seeing clubs close and festivals come to an end. It really feels like there's a crisis that needs a lot more attention.
Meanwhile, last week UK Music released their annual report which showed that the music industry is booming, contributing a record £8 billion to the UK economy - that's up 5% on the year before and now employing over 220,000 people.
On this week's podcast, I sat down with Tom Kiehl, the CEO of UK Music to discuss their annual report, non-consensual AI, lobbying government, how music can be booming at the top end whilst some grassroots businesses are going bust, and so much more.
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