LONDON’S Mayor Boris Johnson has today backed a campaign to save London’s live music venues, following a steep decline in the number of gig hubs in the city.
A once bustling music hub in London’s Soho featured almost 100 live venues and today is home to just six. Elsewhere, we’ve seen extremely iconic venues including Leeds’ Cockpit close- that was once home to gigs from the likes of Oasis, Blur and Pulp.
One of the very few live music venues in Edinburgh, The Picture House, has also closed in recent years leaving the city with very little options for live music gigs and in-turn having a massive impact on grassroots musicians in the capital.
Grassroots music venues have taken a major hit in the past several years, with 35% closing in London alone since 2007. The music industry is worth 1.6 million annually in the UK and a new report published by the Music Venue Trust hopes to halt further closures up and down the country.
Factors identified in Music Venue Trust’s recent report for the increase in closures include rising rents, licensing restrictions, noise complaints by residents, landlords selling venues to developers to turn into housing and the lack of an oversight body to represent the industry.
Watch this recent BBC report on the issues surrounding small music venues below:
