The UK's fan-led live music revolution: saving grassroots venues & fixing ticket rip-off pricing – with Lord Kevin Brennan and Shain Shapiro

0:03Shain Shapiro:Hello, welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music Ally. If you want a guide to what's going on in the music industry and how it all works, then here we are looking at the finances of the music industry and bringing you stories and comment from the pop business in the past week. He, Stuart, oh wait, it's just me, Joe Sparrow, this week, because we have not one, but two very special guests. We have Lord Brennan of Canton, the Labour member of the UK's House of Lords, and Shane Shapiro, founder of Sound Diplomacy and executive director of the Centre for Music Ecosystems. They're here to talk about a topic that we know from chatting to you over the past year or two that is of extreme interest to you.

0:44Shain Shapiro:the future of the UK's live industry at the grassroots level, and the fan experience associated with being a music or a live music fan. That means we're going to talk about ticket pricing, grassroots venues, music fan associations, and more. And it's all built on the results of the UK's fan-led review of live and electronic music, the House of Commons committee special report that Shane and Lord Kevin Brennan we'll be discussing later today in the real world outside of the podcast at the Music Cities Convention in Hull in the UK. So we chat with Kevin first about the report and what we can learn from it.

1:24Shain Shapiro:And then we chat to Shane who adds some fascinating insight into how we as music fans can make local change happen. As ever, the price of Music Superfan subscribers get about 50 % extra chat this week, the full unedited conversations with both of those guests. If you'd like to join our growing superfan community. You can find the Patreon link in the podcast notes, or if you can write things down quickly, it's patreon.com slash thepriceofmusic. All right, let's get speaking to Lord Brennan and Mr Shapiro. So once again, we're happy to welcome Lord Brennan of Canton to the Price of Music. And as a reminder, not only is he a Labour member of the UK's House of Lords, but he's also a musician himself.

2:04Shain Shapiro:You'll find him on your preferred streaming service to check out his music. Hello, and thanks for joining us, Kevin. It's a pleasure. Great to have you here. Now, you joined us last in October 2025. And that was when the UK government's fan-led review of live and electronic music was launched. We're very happy to have you back again. And this is ahead of you speaking in depth about that review on the 10th of June in Hull at the Music Cities Convention, organized by Sound Diplomacy. So if you're in the region, you can check that out. And of course, this is something that our listeners are particularly passionate about.

2:39Shain Shapiro:We get letters and, well, not letters, we get emails about this all the time. And this independent live music review was a huge undertaking, right? It was 4 ,000 survey responses, roundtables around the UK, a fans charter being created. So this is a big piece of work. I just want to, before we dive into that, I'd like to just set a bit of context on the impact that reviews like this can have. So if we can take a quick step back to rewind a couple of years is when you oversaw or were very strongly involved with the UK government's music streaming inquiry and report. And there was a lot of suggestions in that about how music streaming could work differently for artists and how labels interact with it and things like that.

3:24Shain Shapiro:How did that translate into change? Because there was a sort of similar process here.

3:29Lord Kevin Brennan:Yeah. I mean, to be technically correct, it wasn't the government's sort of review or inquiry. It was the select committee's review. So in effect, it's Parliament doing an inquiry and then saying to the government, this is what we think. What's your response to what we've got to say about this? And you're right. The economics of music streaming report was a very, very, you know, chunky piece of work by a select committee to undertake. And I think lots of people acknowledged it was pretty groundbreaking. And it came up with a series of recommendations. organizations the over the overarching thing was it called for a complete reset in the music industry in the way that streaming and the economics of music streaming worked and under that there were a series of quite um significant recommendations about it including something called equitable remuneration which i think for the for the sake of the lay listener is basically just making sure musicians got paid more uh you know from from from the the money generated from streaming but also lots of other things like giving musicians the right to revoke their contracts after a period of time and get their rights back and get their music back uh as is the case in america and and also improvements on things like data and the way that data is you know processed and shared so you know have some transparency about what's happening with your music and whether you should be being paid more than you are already so there was there were you you know, listeners can read it for themselves.

4:53Lord Kevin Brennan:But there was a very significant number of recommendations. In fact, I was just reading the draft of Hayley Bosher's second edition of her book, Copyright in the Music Industry. Hayley's, you know, a real expert in this area. And she's got a new chapter in that book, which I was just reading, reviewing that streaming inquiry and looking at what were the outcomes from it. And I think if I'm truthful, the outcomes were we didn't get the complete reset we were looking for but we did get some positive tweaks around the edges and it did generate some important things like you know better data and and and things like um for example the the the first time ever the agreement of paying per diems daily rates for songwriters who are commissioned by record by um record labels to write with some of their artists and so on so there were some definite benefits that came out of it did we get the radical shake-up that the select committee was talking for i think probably the answer is no but there's still ongoing work and that i think the the the f the the the ripples if you like from that select committee inquiry are still going on but other things then tend to come along you know with technology as we know with it with ai which we're not we're not on about today but with that coming along as well that provides further

6:05Shain Shapiro:challenges to to the whole thing yeah so it's i guess the snapshot there is that these these big overarching pieces of work can have substantial change but that change can be quite slow or it can be sort of it can sort of fade in as things change in the real world slower than what we want

6:24Lord Kevin Brennan:absolutely and and you know things don't happen until they do happen that's the that's the way it works in in in politics uh and in public policy areas and music is governed by a lot of rules around copyright and so on that are you know in the purview of of of policymakers and we can we We can make a difference to them. And I think you've just got to keep ploughing away on these things and try and get change for the better. And my mission has always been to make that change that goes in the favour of creator, better creator remuneration. That's at the heart of most of the things that I do around music in politics.

7:00Shain Shapiro:The kind of sentiments that will resonate well with our audience. Let's talk now about the fan-led review of live and electronic music. This was a special report. So this is a similar starting point to the one you just described. I'll link to this. Beneath the podcast, there's a really good overview there and the full report as well to have a look at. I know you're going to be talking about this in a couple of days, but what are the key takeaways when you got all that information back and processed it?

7:32Lord Kevin Brennan:Well, what I try to do is to, obviously this is to reflect what fans have told us. So this isn't reflecting back necessarily what every industry body might think about it's really meant to lean in as the football fan-led review did to what the views of fans are and what's quite interesting really i think about it was that overwhelmingly lots of the things that they care about are very practical things they're not eerie fairy things at all uh and i boiled it down really having done all these round tables talked to people looked at all the surveys to what i'd call the seven essentials of live the things that fans really really care about when you talk about um live music and they are very very practical things for example that what they are just to go trot through them quickly celebration it's it's fans want us to embrace live music not just as a money-making activity but as a public good something that's good for society that's good for people it's good for our mental health it's good for our welfare it's good for our communities ticketing they want fair open transparent you know um uh ticketing practices and then to the sorts of rip-off practices that we all are familiar with the grassroots they want to nurture you know grassroots music venues and and musicians at the grassroots level for its own sake but also then as an incubator obviously for future success for musicians and for the industry safety they care about prioritizing um protecting fans from you know harm when they attend live events accessibility care about making sure that gigs and concerts and so on are accessible to everyone and that everybody involved in live music should think about that and act accordingly transport key thing for lots of fans you know getting to and from gigs particularly getting away here often from gigs uh you know and and making that a central part of transport policy thinking about live music events and the last one was a voice to have a voice for fans to make sure that their concerns are actually listened to they're not the last person on the list that's consulted about anything to do with live events and to promote and support the voice of fans so that's really how it boiled down for me um you know from this kind of year-long um piece of work that we've been doing and i guess there's there's not there's no enormous surprises on there because

9:53Shain Shapiro:but but it's great to have all this stuff pulled together in one place and say like look this is a representative selection of the fans voices and actually you you're already by focusing it like that you it's it's sort of more clear how changes can be made around things like transport you know these are these these are things that you you can picture happening um before we sort of break those down a bit further into certain areas you've also recommended the creation of a formal music fans association which gives fans the idea would be to give fans power and decision making there was a similar thing of course with the football a similar football thing uh many years ago which was quite effective so how would that work structurally yeah it's a bit trickier in some

10:34Lord Kevin Brennan:ways in music because obviously with football fans you know they do support a club don't you support a football club you know we've just seen that that you know this week with the champions league and the you know the uh the premier league title and all that the fanaticism of football fans music fans are fanatical yes about the artists that they love they can also be fans obviously the venues that they attend there's a there's a different kind of fandom sometimes involved in music um and maybe that makes it a little bit more difficult because with football this fan-led um you know voice emerged i think really out of some of the disasters of the 1980s of things like hillsborough you know and uh all those sorts of things that brought people together the legislation the government passed then to restrict you know the sorts of activities at football matches about football, hooliganism and all that kind of thing, really, I think, made fans have to generate their own voice.

11:29Lord Kevin Brennan:I think we need something similar in music. There isn't a collective voice for fans that are expressing the sorts of things that we found out from this review. And what I've suggested in the report is that the government should initially scope this, sort of give it some seed funding, but really in the longer term, as within football, it should be picked up by the industry itself these things are not horrendously expensive and overall are going to save you money if you're actually meeting the needs of your consumers and your customers um and listening to their voice and responding accordingly you know my view is that's that's only for the good of everybody involved in the in the music in the live music industry um so uh it's a tricky thing i think um there are some local initiatives which could grow into more of a national, you know, fans, music fans association.

12:19Lord Kevin Brennan:But that's the sort of thing I think would really help that element, which I said, one of the seven essentials of live voice, the fans' voice being heard and acted upon.

12:29Shain Shapiro:The parallel between football and music is really useful in some ways, isn't it? Because it doesn't matter if you're a fan of Arsenal or Manchester City or if you're a fan of a very local, small, lower league team. you're essentially support you're doing the same thing it's just the parameters are a bit different and that's the same whether you're a taylor swift fan you go to wembley you go with 90 000 other people to wembley stadium for a show or if you love going to the show the stoke sugar mill and you know paying 10 pounds and going in on a tuesday night to watch some bands um the experience is essentially the same from the perspective of that person

13:05Lord Kevin Brennan:yeah yeah and i suppose in some ways um you know music i feel in some ways from when i was a youngster is less tribal than it used to be i think people are more open-minded in a way across different genres you know when i was growing up you either liked david bowie or mark bolan and but you wouldn't like one of you but that's a ridiculous when you think about it yeah if you

13:27Shain Shapiro:talk to uh i can use this phrase now young people these days and they they don't seem to have any artists they truly dislike you know like i remember when you know when i was younger it was everybody disliked Fleetwood Mac. They were just sort of the sign of, for my generation.

13:42Lord Kevin Brennan:I'd rather Jack than Fleetwood Mac. That was a hit record at one time.

13:46Shain Shapiro:Hazel Dean, I can't remember. But, you know, they stood for something you rebelled against, and now everyone likes Fleetwood Mac and it doesn't matter anymore. Okay, let's talk about ticketing and dynamic pricing and things like that, which is something which, you know, I think if you talk to any fan, is one of the high things on the list. The report called out the market dominance of the large companies in ticketing. And there was also mention of the Competition and Markets Authority to take a look at those corporations and see what they're doing. And there was quite a hard line in there against the dynamic pricing, the surge pricing.

14:24Shain Shapiro:And there was a call for, as we've heard recently in politics elsewhere, where a ban on ticket resale above face found you. This is one of those things that every fan has an opinion on, and generally they're united. They don't like it, right? The live music industry, though, is going to say, well, you know, dynamic pricing is standard free market economics. We're capturing value for the artists. But the report pushes back clearly on that. So first of all, what are your thoughts generally about ticketing and pricing at the moment?

15:03Lord Kevin Brennan:Yeah, I think the, I mean, for me, the key word in all of this is transparency. And that's what's largely missing from the equation when it comes to ticketing a lot of the time. If somebody really wants to charge£500, you know, and see how many people will turn up to see them, you know, fine. You know, if that's what they want to do. As you say, it's a free country if you want to do that. But you should be transparent about it, and you shouldn't be actually creating an artificial stampede for tickets by using dodgy tactics. You shouldn't be making that money, you know, very, very opaque by hiding actually what we're, you know, that there's going to be booking fees added on, that, you know, you're going into a sale expecting, you know, that you're going to get your ticket for£100, and then suddenly you bounced into saying, actually, we've only got tickets worth£500 left now, even though it's actually the same ticket you would have bought an hour previously.

16:04Lord Kevin Brennan:All that is out of order, and that's the sort of thing that should be outlawed and the sorts of things that really makes fans very angry. And if you look at my report at the end at the sort of statistical graphs, the one thing where there's a sort of purple line where it says fans strongly disagree with something, and one thing with that purple line is huge the purple block it's on surge pricing is fair when demand for tickets is high you know strongly disagree kind of is that is a massive response from fans of that so i think transparency is the thing and and and the people do not understand really what's going on here sometimes but they know when they're getting ripped off for example you know one thing that gets my goat a lot and gets a lot of fans goat is you know additional fees on top of the ticket price now i'm an artist and i say i want to keep ticket prices low for my fans uh i don't want to charge more than you know 40 pounds for a ticket for this you know this big theater arena show whatever is i'm doing that's fine and then all of a sudden if you find yourself paying 17 pound 50 booking fees on top of that you're thinking well where's that money going and the truth is sometimes some of that money is paying for the maybe the ticketing website you know the costs of that but some of it is going in the pocket of the promoter some of it actually whisper it softly is going in the pocket of the artist sometimes and they're not telling us that their management are very carefully skimming their bit off it transparency is the key thing and i think that's what we should make sure is happening and that's why in in terms of being fair to consumers in any marketplace that's what should be happening you know as again you know we'll go back to the the pre-digital age you know we many of us probably joined a queue to to buy some tickets somewhere in a record shop or somewhere for a for a gig you know and we're at the back of the queue we knew when we if we got to the front of the queue and there were any tickets left we knew we could get them you know for the advertised price uh but online what happens is a fake kind of um urgency is created as a surge tickets are released in batches and so on in order to you know maximize and shake down fans and and there's no transparency and clarity about it so that's what i'm calling for the government has committed um albeit it's only publishing at this stage a draft bill to outlaw secondary ticketing rip-off pricing um but we do also need to make sure that in the primary sector that it's being done fairly by you know the companies that are involved in it and it is right that the competition authority should keep a very close eye on what's going on is clearly set out.

18:43Shain Shapiro:Yeah, okay. Let's talk about the other topic, which is, I think, a big favourite, at least of our listeners, but probably in your data as well, which is the grassroots venue issue. It feels like grassroots venues are on a clifftop at the moment. We know that they're struggling. We know that they're closing at a really sort of scary rate. And the report also highlighted the fact that grassroots venues, as a whole around this huge collective shortfall. I think it was£76 million or something like that. There were recommendations in there as well. Before we dig into that, what's your sort of top line, well, your feelings about grassroots venues and what needs to be done, but also what you saw in the fan survey, etc.?

19:33Lord Kevin Brennan:Yeah, it's always a little bit of a tightrope to walk with this because you don't want to spread so much doom and gloom that it becomes a self-love in prophecy there are lots of venues out there that are doing amazing things and that are really um you know doing doing pretty well i mean there's a venue in my own constituent my own old constituency i'm no longer a member of parliament but uh that that you know i was talking to the the owner there and he you know i think every event since christmas bar a couple had been sold out because they've got a you know they've got the right program they've got the right email list with their you know regulars and so on and they're bringing them the the artists that they want in there so that you can make a success story out of these things uh they just need the right sort of public um infrastructure public policy infrastructure support things like making sure that planning regulations at a local level are operating in such a way that it doesn't make life impossible for these um for these venues that the industry itself is understanding the importance of grassroots and that has happened in the last couple of years with the creation of the live trust which is a voluntary levy which is paid by larger arenas and stadiums uh you know towards the grassroots infrastructure not just the venues themselves but also supporting you know acts to be able to play in some of those venues and and and get get themselves um you know started in their music careers so you know i think there's some really positive things going on there and and and the report is really saying let's have more of this one thing I do say is it's my view that the levy that the government ought to at least take the reserve power to make the levy a statutory levy in other words make it the law that there should be a redistribution of a small amount of ticket takings from the larger venues down to the grassroots because what happens with these things sometimes is they start off quite well and you know people pay into them and then they lose a bit of impetus and it goes away.

21:35Lord Kevin Brennan:But we're already seeing some of the benefits of it. Some great innovations like venues building reasonably cheap accommodation that bands can stay in when they're at the venues. Making sure they've all got a good back line. Lots of things. You can make sure they've got the right in relation to another part of the report, the right kind of accessibility so that everybody can go along and enjoy their local grassroots venue. So I think there's loads of positive things going on, and we just need to do more of it.

22:03Shain Shapiro:And as you say, this is one of those topics that people are very passionate about. And it feels like in some ways, grassroots venues are almost, if they're surviving, it's because they're undergoing this kind of modernization, which is a reflection of what people want and need. And there are, you know, it's, we're in a very different, we're going back in time again, Kevin, but like it's very different to how it used to be where you know people would yeah they'd go out every friday to the same venue you pay the same thing see three bands see their friends i mean that is not the social dynamic of the world anymore so there's there's something else going

22:37Lord Kevin Brennan:on there isn't there um and yeah i think so i mean i think you know we might have enjoyed going down a dingy staircase onto a sticky floor and you know probably catching covid or it didn't exist back then or whatever and if you saw anyone out there over the age of 25 you'd say what are you doing here granddad you know it's changed the live music scene you know in in that sense of people just as in every other area of life looking for something uh more out of their grassroots and something something a bit different and you know modernization is important but i think these things do come in waves and i i have a kind of inner optimism that that um that with some of the great talent that's coming through now if they give them the opportunity at the grassroots we can still have this amazing, vibrant live music scene we've always had in the UK.

23:23Shain Shapiro:Yeah, and that's, when you zoom all the way out, that's really important as well, isn't it? We've seen the UK in recent years, while there are still huge international artists, particularly last year we saw some great successes globally of British artists, there is this sort of feeling that, whereas perhaps in the past the UK had this slight, let's say, anglophone advantage, that is not the case anymore. The global music system is different. So it's really important to get these young emerging artists coming through, as you said earlier, actually on a stage, connecting with people, because you can't do everything on TikTok.

23:59Lord Kevin Brennan:That's absolutely right. And clearly, music has become more globalised by streaming, and lots of wonderful music from all around the world is now instantly available to people, and clearly people are enjoying that massively. But we still hugely punch above our weight, even though, you know, over our global share is not what it might once have been as a country. We're still one of the few countries in the world that's a net exporter of music. We actually earn foreign currency from music. There's not many industries that that's actually true of in the UK. And so we should nurture, cherish and develop that.

24:35Lord Kevin Brennan:and this report is really about, partly about, you know, the R &D, the work that needs to be done to ensure we have that success into the future.

24:44Shain Shapiro:You mentioned that obviously grassroots venues have very tight margins and, you know, we've all seen this happen in big cities and towns where a music venue is part of the reason that a district becomes cool, apartments get built or taken over, people move in because they want to go to the cool place and then they complain about the music that made it cool in the first place. And that's something which hopefully in the future might be mitigated against. But there's, and acknowledging what you said earlier, that grassroots venues are doing really well, but there's also, that margin is really tight.

25:22Shain Shapiro:We've spoken to people who run venues on the podcast and they mentioned their margins are around 2%. what what do we do or what can be done about in an immediate sense for those venues that are struggling at the moment is there anything yeah

25:38Lord Kevin Brennan:well i mean there's a number of recommendations actually in the reports under under under grassroots so under those seven sort of essentials i was talking about earlier there's actually about 50 recommendations throughout the report so lots of things are in there to do with how you know we can all help our local grassroots venues like local councils you know working together to support mentorship schemes for local promoters and so on things like um the government um making sure it takes powers in the ticketing legislation to do the mandatory levy which i just talked about local authorities venues artists and fans working together to maintain up-to-date listings of what's going on you know getting the information out there what's going on at your local venue a lot of people don't know you know what's what's available to them in the locality um getting artists and managers to let you know some of the to play some of these venues sometimes some of the contractual obligations means they're not allowed to play in smaller venues and that's you know very very unfortunate because you know these are the sorts of things that they could practically do um you know to to support them local authorities have been a bit more flexible about sometimes repurposing buildings albeit sometimes on a temporary basis to allow pop-up grassroots its venues to happen.

26:50Lord Kevin Brennan:Make sure there's somebody in every council got music in the cabinet in the council as part of their responsibilities directly on the council. And those sorts of practical measures, there's lots of things that can be done that are helpful. And taken all together, you're not going to be able to always stop music venues closing down. The Music Venue Trust does a very good job of trying to step in where there's a problem and giving them an emergency kind of, you know, audit and package to see if they can get them over the hump. But ultimately, it's a business and you have got to, you know, get people through the door and get some revenue in to be successful.

27:31Lord Kevin Brennan:But there's no need sometimes for some of these venues to go under when there could be help available that could keep them going.

27:37Shain Shapiro:Okay, so getting close to wrapping up here. So really, there's some interesting different angles here for the responsibility for the business itself. So of taking responsibility for what they're doing on a business level and maybe accepting some changes and redistributing some money. And then on the governmental level, it's more sort of around encouraging change at a local level and maybe making a few small things, mandatory levies and things like that to sort of have this sort of cascading effect of change going forwards. of course if you're in and around Hull on the 10th you'll be able to go to the Music Cities Convention and hear Kevin talking about this in much more detail final question then for you if you were handed this is hypothetical if you were handed emergency dictatorial powers over urban and cultural policy for 24 hours what's the biggest structural change you would make to this musical ecosystem the live system to sort of ensure that 10 years from now fans are protected, grassroots venues are thriving and so on?

28:42Lord Kevin Brennan:I think my glib answer would be I would instantly sort of, you know, make sure that all the recommendations in my report are implemented if I was the benevolent dictator that you're allowing me to be. I'm probably, you know, dialing down into it, though, at a practical level. I think supporting grassroots, you know, artists and, you know, music venues is really important. And so I think making sure that something like the Live Trust levy has a longer term future and can support grassroots music is a thing that I'd like to see happen.

29:17Shain Shapiro:All right. So thank you very much. I think this is something which we're going to hear from our listeners about because it's something that, as I said, they're very passionate about. And I will link to the report, but of the podcast, people can read it for themselves. and of course on Musical.ly we'll keep reporting on it as things develop. So thanks ever so much for coming back on the podcast, Kevin, and hopefully we'll get you back in a reasonable amount of time to see how things are developing when all these recommendations have been unilaterally approved.