A fair few of us here are in some way ‘involved’ with the grassroots live music scene – whether folk or jazz clubs, grassroots venues or a bit of promoting that artist we know and love in our hometown. In the dynamic tickets thread there was a comment about ticketmaster pricing for yer big gigs impacting on sales lower down the food chain. From the things I’m involved in….

1. Artists and agents are still cautious. There’s both a lot of acts wanting to tour, and not enough of the acts that you’d jump to put in the programme.

2. For events with a pre-COVID comparator we are on average 25-33% down on pre-COVID levels. This is not uniform, and gigs with an appeal to the under-thirties are doing fine…

3. Conversely, gigs where the core audience was over fifty are really suffering. With several very high-calibre artists we’ve said we’ve been slightly disappointed at the audience we’ve got, only to hear it’s the best attendance of the tour.

So this is a bit of rant/therapy session thread. I’d love to hear from others what it’s like out there – good, bad or ugly No need for names, musings on » Continue Reading.