For our monthly columnist and Music Venue Trust CEO Mark Davyd, 2025 “has been a year of stark contradictions” at the end of which “we can see the shape of the solutions for the grassroots sector, but we’ve struggled to make them a practical reality”. Here, he reflects on the biggest events of the last 12 months, good and bad...


The government’s approach to the grassroots music sector this year was well intentioned but poorly executed, creating a steady drain on venue resources through cumulative pressures. The rise in employers’ National Insurance contributions, the absence of targeted VAT relief and the escalating cost of compliance were never designed to target us, but their collective impact has been profound. The fundamental issue is a failure to actively design policy that helps rather than hinders. No one in Whitehall set out to cause harm, but by forgetting to make it easier, they have instead made it harder. We are left managing a crisis that remains largely unseen and unrecognised within the very policy frameworks that should be offering solutions, forcing us to spend energy on survival that should be spent on growth.


1 3 The unsustainable squeeze


While public attention focused on easing energy costs, a silent crisis continued elsewhere. Rents, business insurance and staffing costs have all climbed relentlessly, creating a cost base that is increasingly impossible to sustain. At the same time, the disposable income of our audience remains under severe pressure, limiting what venues can reasonably charge at the door. This creates an impossible pincer movement. The top end of the industry celebrates record revenues, but the grassroots foundation is being forced to subsidise the entire ecosystem’s future. The economic model is broken, and the incremental fixes proposed so far are not matching the scale of a problem that threatens to collapse the pipeline of talent.


5 A sector in denial


A baffling and dangerous disconnect persists within our own industry. The mainstream conversation remains dominated by the economics of arena residencies, the implications of AI-generated music and stadium-scale profits. Meanwhile, the very stages that discover, nurture and build the artists for those spaces are still treated as a charitable cause or an afterthought. This cultural amnesia is our greatest strategic threat. It ignores the fundamental reality that the entire music ecosystem relies on a healthy grassroots pipeline. If we continue to take the foundation for granted and allow this pipeline to drain, the entire industry will feel the consequences within a few short years, facing a starved and homogenised future.


64 | Music Week Policy by accident


FIVE NEGATIVES FROM 2025 The implementation gap


2


We began the year with promising signals: the Culture Media & Sport Select Committee report’s recommendations were engaged, the fan-led review was announced and there was a palpable sense of understanding in meetings. Yet, this initial momentum dissolved into a familiar pattern of delay and inaction. The systemic inertia within the political machine means that promises made are not actions delivered. Venues that were on the brink in March found themselves in an even more precarious position by October, still waiting for the tangible support that was hinted at. This isn’t active opposition; it is a failure of process where action is perpetually scheduled for a tomorrow that arrives too late for those who need it most, leaving them to face closure without a lifeline.


4 The slow bleed of venues


The story of 2025 was not defined by a few high-profile closures, but by the slow, quiet fade of countless beloved venues. These spaces do not fail because they are unloved or lack cultural relevance; they are killed by a decade of cumulative crises that have exhausted their operators, both financially and emotionally. The constant firefighting, from the pandemic to the cost-of-living crisis, has burned through every reserve of cash and energy. These operators are not giving up; they are simply being emptied out. The loss of each one is not just the loss of a stage, but the loss of a community hub, a talent incubator and a piece of our cultural fabric that cannot be easily replaced.


Trust the process: (L-R) MVT patrons Nova Twins, team MVT outside Parliament and (facing page) The Last Dinner Party, who called for support for venues at the BRITs


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2025 REVIEW SPECIAL


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