From the GigEntry desk.
What's actually happening across UK live music — closures and fightbacks, festivals, and the fan-first stuff. Researched from the trade press and rewritten in our own words.
The £1 levy pays out its first £500,000 — with a deadline breathing down its neck
The LIVE Trust has distributed the first £500,000 from the voluntary £1 arena-ticket levy — but the government's 30 June deadline for the scheme to prove itself has now passed, with a statutory levy waiting if it hasn't.
Read the full story →The download store is dying. A Bristol startup wants to be what comes next.
With Juno gone, Dubrate opens in public beta — 85% to the artist on every sale, and the DJ tools first.
Read more →Face value goes to Parliament: the Ticket Tout Ban Bill lands in the King's Speech
Resale above face value becomes illegal, platform fees get capped, and resale sites carry the enforcement duty — in draft form, for now.
Read more →175 towns where the tour no longer stops
MVT's latest research: 175 towns with working grassroots venues no longer get regular touring shows. The map is losing routes, not just rooms.
Read more →592 and holding: Britain's festival map shrinks — and starts fighting back
AIF counts 592 UK festivals, down from 900 in 2019 — but 2026 brings a wave of new launches, including one built to fund the grassroots.
Read more →The download dies: Juno pulls the plug on its MP3 store after 20 years
The digital home of dance music went dark overnight — though the Juno Records vinyl shop survives.
Read more →Half of UK recording studios fear closure within a year as business rates bite
A Music Producers Guild study warns roughly half of Britain's commercial studios are weighing closure within 12 months, with not a single one able to pass the soaring costs on to clients.
Read more →Tangled Parrot pulls up roots: Welsh indie shop quits Carmarthen and Swansea High Street for new Kingsway flagship
The 26-year-old independent record shop is consolidating two stores into a single larger Swansea unit, not closing its doors for good.
Read more →Grassroots venues bleeding out: half made no profit, 30 gone, 6,000 jobs lost in a year
The Music Venue Trust's Annual Report 2025 lays bare a sector running on fumes, with margins so thin that one bad month finishes the job.
Read more →The Joiners and The Croft go into community hands as fans buy the freeholds
Two grassroots strongholds, Southampton's Joiners and Bristol's Croft, have been pulled out of the lease-trap and into community ownership by Music Venue Properties' Own Our Venues scheme.
Read more →A quarter of UK towns now have nowhere left to dance
New NTIA figures show 26% of towns that once had a nightclub now have none, with the late-night sector down more than a quarter since 2020.
Read more →Red Rooster won't crow: Suffolk Americana festival folds after 12 years
The beloved Euston Estate Americana weekender has been pulled and its organiser is heading into liquidation, after the money to stage a 2026 edition simply wasn't there.
Read more →Hardwick Festival hits pause for 2026 as the maths stops adding up
After twelve years on the County Durham calendar, the 30,000-capacity festival is sitting out 2026 — with organisers insisting it's a breather, not a goodbye.
Read more →Kasabian crack open a brand-new Leeds Thursday as Reading & Leeds names its 2026 six
The August Bank Holiday twin-site has locked in six headliners, handed Leeds its first-ever Thursday night top-billing, and pulled Florence + The Machine back after fourteen years away.
Read more →Touts on notice: government to outlaw resale above face value
Whitehall has finally committed to killing the profit motive in ticket resale, capping prices at face value and putting platforms on the hook to police it.
Read more →