UK Music publishes roadmap report to restart live music in 2021
The demise of live music throughout the pandemic has impacted the entire music industry - not only have festivals suffered a 90.2% drop in revenue throughout 2020, the live events workforce facing redundancies up to 50%, but artists themselves are losing up to 80% of their income.
There's increasing cause for optimism, however: UK Music have stepped in where the government have faltered, and published their roadmap report on how live music events can restart safely and successfully in 2021.
Their report Let The Music Play: Save Our Summer 2021 outlines the economic, cultural, and social value of the live music sector, calling for government to introduce a Covid insurance scheme (similarly to the film and television sectors) to ensure these events can take place without crippling financial risks.
This comes as pressure on the government for clarity and a strategy to restart the live music sector intensifies, with uncertainty plaguing both global events such as Glastonbury as well as the grassroots music eco-system.
Both UK Music Chief Executive Jamie Njoku-Goodwin and Paul Reed, CEO of the Association of Independent Festivals gave evidence today at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s inquiry into music festivals, a session you can watch here.
With a clear plan in place, and the necessary government support, we could be seeing images like below once again this summer. At present sadly, it still feels like a very long way away:
The key calls for action in the report are:
- An indicative date for a full capacity restart.
- A Government-backed indemnity scheme.
- Targeted financial support for the sector.
- Extension to the VAT rate reduction on tickets.
- Rollover of the paid 2020 Local Authority licence fees for festivals to 2021.
- Extension to business rates relief.
Read Let The Music Play: Save Our Summer 2021 in its entirety here.