Live music contributed record £6.1bn to UK economy in 2023
The figure is largely thanks to massive stadium tours from Beyoncé and Coldplay last summer.
The live music industry contributed a record £6.1billion to the UK economy last year, new figures have revealed.
The LIVE organisation this week published new findings from 2023, revealing that the impact on the economy from live music in the country is higher than ever before.
The figure is up 17 per cent up on the previous year, and a huge 35 per cent up on 2019, the last full year of live music before the pandemic.
Despite the figures being calculated from over 55,000 gigs and events, three quarters of the £6bn figure came from huge stadium tours last year from Beyoncé and Coldplay.
Though this figure is at a record high, grassroots venues continue to struggle, with the Music Venue Trust recently launching a new scheme called ‘The Artist Pledge’, which aims to encourage arena-level acts to give back to the grassroots.
The new pledge, signed at the outset by 45 artists including Enter Shikari and Frank Turner, asks arena-level acts to give small amounts of to the grassroots scene when they reach a certain level of success.
Enter Shikari already made headlines last year when they pledged to give £1 of every ticket sale on their UK tour to the Music Venue Trust.
Back in May, The Ferret in Preston is the second grassroots music venue to secure its future as part of the Music Venue Trust’s ‘Own Our Venues’ scheme. It comes after the scheme oversaw the successful purchase of The Snug in Atherton, Greater Manchester, last year.