UK Music call for shakeup of small venue gig laws

UK music have today called for a new cabinet committee for the music industry. Awesome - as I've said many times, the industry is changing, and the acceptance of that, and the desire to support an industry that makes is worth £5billion a year to our economy, is crucial.

However, it's one specific aspect of Feargal Sharkey's new proposals that I want to focus on. Licenses for small venues to put on gigs. He's described the necessity for pubs, and smaller clubs and venues to have a license to put gigs on as "a huge bureaucratic burden to place on those pubs and artists". I agree.

To say music needs a live scene is stating the bloomin' obvious. However, perhaps the need for this grass roots level, places where people can play to 50 people in a pub, is something that's not been debated enough. Obviously our focus here is on the promotion of music, and I'd love to be writing an article right now on how finding small gigs to go and meet new people and play your music to is a great way of building fans and even contacts. But I'm not writing that article, because I know how hard it can be. I live near Norwich in the United Kingdom. We have a few venues here, the UEA, Waterfront, and Arts Centre being the main ones. They're fantastic, but I know from experience that they aren't cheap or easy to book, and that for unsigned bands it's almost impossible to get a gig there. I'd love to say there were more venues smothered around my city that made a live scene for small and unsigned artists possible, but yet again, I can't.

"That first step is what is part of the process of what ends up with people being able to stand on a stage at Wembley in front of ninety thousand people." Sharkey goes on. This summarises it nicely for me. I think we need to make it easy for the owners of pubs, clubs, even places that could double up as a venue, if music is to continue to breed talent from a garage band level. Playing to small crowds can be great publicity, a great moneymaker and indeed just great fun! Anything that can make this more common surely can't be a bad thing?