by Pete Wishart for The Courier, 16 January 2024

Scotland is a first-class destination for concerts, with few other nations of our size able to boast the same standard of facilities for artists and music fans alike.

Glasgow was the UK’s first UNESCO City of Music, and pre-Covid hosted an average of 130 gigs and music events every week, contributing an estimated £75m each year to the city’s economy. In Edinburgh, AEG Europe, owners of the O2, is seeking planning approval for an 8,500-capacity arena at Edinburgh Park which will transform the city’s music offer. All over Scotland, ticket sales for large music events remain buoyant.

With a further series of stadium concerts this year, from the likes of Taylor Swift and the Foo Fighters, life is in fact booming for those at the top of the music money tree. Further down the green chutes, which provide the regeneration of the sector, are perhaps not doing quite so well.

Last year the Music Venue Trust warned that new bands will be left without a place to perform after 127 grassroots sites closed or stopped offering music since last summer. Around 16% of the UK’s small venues have closed or have stopped putting on gigs, meaning the loss of an opportunity for new acts to perform and more than £9m in income for musicians.

This is typical of a music industry where the enormous wealth generated by a nation’s love of music remains in the hands of a very small group of extremely wealthy people. The Musician’s Union found that UK musicians’ average annual income is £20,700 – with nearly half earning under £14,000.

As well as fewer places to perform, streaming services offer a pittance for recorded work; and Brexit costs means large parts of Europe are now outwith financial consideration. Meanwhile, the top 10 artists in the world are reckoned to have assets equivalent to the economy of a medium sized nation.

For the sake of the whole sector, considerations must be made to address this incredible imbalance and inequity.

One modest proposal is that £1 be levied on each concert with a capacity of over 5,000. The Music Venue Trust reckon this could generate £1 million in Scotland to be reinvested in grass roots activity. Scottish Government ministers have said that they will consider this proposal and I very much hope that they take it forward.

Where it is unlikely the UK Government will follow suit, in France all major live music events are required to pay 3.5% of each ticket sale to the Centre National De La Musique, which then funds various projects, including  grants for grassroots venues.

There also remains resistance to this proposal from the sector, dubbing it as an unnecessary extra tax on fans. Where I would prefer a solution where any levy is taken from those who profit from the holding of a concert, like France, an extra £1 is highly unlikely to deter people who already pay £109.40 to stand at a Taylor Swift concert at Murrayfield.

What we must do is impress upon industry and government that traditional means of supporting music at the grass roots level needs to be revised, and new means explored to offer support.

Increasingly, mega events and larger concerts crowd out the resource available at the bottom. Surely it is only reasonable to use some of the sales revenue from those at the heights of industry stardom to help out the next generation of up-and-coming artists?