Saturday night, down at your local, pint in hand, and some unknown band tears the stage in front of a tightly packed venue, providing an ambience that the radio just couldn’t. It’s a cathartic end of the week for all attending, a chance to forget about their drab life waiting for them on Monday.
But no more. Reports show that, in the last 20 years, 70% of the UK’s late-night venues have closed down, with the vast majority being grassroots venues that had acted as stepping stones for hundreds of up-and-coming artists.
Yet, from 2021 to 2025, 13.5k new musicians were reported in the UK, and countless headlines about stadiums selling out for artists such as Sam Fender, Oasis, Coldplay, and Taylor Swift, whose ‘Eras Tour’ sold out 8 nights at Wembley.
So it leaves us asking: what’s happening to our live music?
The first issue that comes to everyone’s mind is affordability. It’s undeniable that event tickets have been unreasonably rising, especially for large stadium venues. Dynamic pricing is alleged to be a significant factor in this context. On online ticket-selling platforms like Ticketmaster, it is claimed that dynamic pricing enables algorithms to raise prices when demand rises. Whilst Ticketmaster denies such accusations, what is definitive is that its owner, Live Nation, just lost an antitrust case in the US, with a jury finding that it overcharged customers due to its monopoly in the ticket-selling industry.
To highlight the issue locally, The Strokes will be playing in Newcastle on the 25th October, at Utilita Arena as part of their ‘Reality Awaits’ tour. Starting at around £70, concert-goers online reported that Ticketmaster was charging more than the tickets were on the venue’s own website. With many fans likely coming from outside the Toon, they may be unaware of the option to purchase tickets directly, and if these allegations are true, it is pure monetary greed on Ticketmaster’s part.
Another factor for the younger generation is a lack of time and changing attitudes. With everything currently happening in the world and all the news at your fingertips, it becomes difficult to switch off and find a positive work/life/education balance.
Reports indicate that one in five 14-21-year-olds has never attended a live music event.
This is partly due to the availability of almost endless song catalogues on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, which are included in monthly subscriptions. Such ease of access reshapes the relationship younger audiences have with the music they consume, allowing them to hop from one artist to another, sometimes not exploring an album or discography to the same extent that one would have a couple of decades ago, when they had to purchase each individual album.
Compounding this issue are innovations like Spotify’s AI DJ, a service integrated into its app that allows users to have personal playlists curated by its algorithm based on their exact feelings at that moment. This can lead young people to feel they will have a more emotional connection to that music when listening to it in the settings they choose, rather than going out to see it live.
Obviously, this is not the majority of young music fans, and many still adore seeing their favourite bands at concerts and festivals, but it reflects a changing demand among younger generations.
Despite the pessimistic nature of this article, live music isn’t going to go away anytime soon, and Newcastle is a city full of great and cheap gigs if you know where to find them. Personal recommendations of mine include: Monday nights at the Low Lights Tavern in North Shields, with local buskers and outstanding pies; The Cluny, with reasonably priced tickets and an intimate venue; The Grove in Byker, hosting a huge variety of artists from metal to hip-hop; and those are just several among countless venues in the area.
Whilst it’s easy to dwell on the negative situation of live music in the UK, there are thousands of musicians and bands across the country looking for gigs, even just to get the exposure. So, stay up to date with your local venues to nab some cheap first-release tickets, talk to your local’s landlord and suggest a live music night, and most importantly, follow the artists you love and support them whenever you have the chance to, as it will only help them put on more shows.