Market report: Venues Full house?
“WHERE EXACTLY is this business going?” was the unspoken question underlining last year’s venue survey, the second in the history of PSNLive. The drop in consumers’ disposable income resulting from the economic crisis as well as lower-than- expected attendances for some large tours were among the concerns to emerge loud and clear from a rather anxious set of responses. In truth, venues’ outlook has changed little over the ensuing 12 months – hardly surprising, given that none of the broader problems have gone away (well, other than the Live Music Bill being passed in the UK – see page 39). Working days as a result of live music are expected to dip slightly, while investment in new audio equipment is largely stagnant. Like many of us, venue operators appear inclined to watch, wait and hope for the best. The geographical breakdown
of our 2012 venues can be seen in Graph V1. In contrast to the last few years’ domination by medium-sized facilities, this year’s contributors reflected a greater diversity – from small, sub-1,000-capacity venues, up to those able to accommodate 4,000 people or more (V2). Once again, thanks to all contributors for their time and insight.
CORE MARKET DATA In an unwelcome development, the largest single share of
Nicole Atkins performs at Komedia, Brighton, during The Great Escape festival/conference 2012 Pic: Tony Ackroyd
respondents expected the number of live music days during full- year 2012 to decline – but not by a margin that anyone could
Live music remains a substantial contributor to European venues’ overall workload, but there are concerns about the future health of an industry weighted so heavily towards heritage acts. Even so, with activity levels still high, there is little evidence of despair, writes David Davies
predicted an improved or unaltered situation (V3). Despite this result, there was a decrease in the number of
Working days as a result of live music are expected to dip slightly, while investment in new audio equipment is largely stagnant
describe as ‘dramatic’ (36% vs 30% in 2011). Collectively, a reasonable 64% of participants
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people expecting live music income to drop this year (17%, vs 26% in 2011). By some
distance, the greatest proportion (63%) of respondents predicted stasis – not a bad result, it might be argued, given current cost pressures (V4). The vast majority of participating venues deemed themselves to be multipurpose, accommodating event types other than live music. Echoing the strong showing made by congress work in our engineers’ survey, conferences and other corporate events represented one of the most commonly-cited applications. Among the other
popular event types were sporting activities, student events and stand-up comedy, although the latter was mentioned surprisingly sparingly given its recent elevation to the throne of “the new rock’n’roll”.
PLANS AND PRIORITIES In the next area of enquiry, venues were asked to reflect on their in-house audio inventories. With some preferring to operate almost as ‘empty shells’ given the evermore exacting
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www.prosoundnewseurope.com WWW.LAKEPROCESSING.COM PSNLIVE 2012 l 17
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