Will $1 on your ticket help save Australian live music? A UK model is much more ambitious.

From: The Conversation | Written by: Sam Whiting & Ben Green

The Australian Music Venue Foundation launched this month to advocate for and potentially administer an arena ticket levy to support grassroots live music venues. Funds would be raised through a small levy, approximately A$1 per ticket, on the price of tickets to large music events, over 5,000 capacity.

The foundation is partly modelled on the United Kingdom’s Music Venue Trust, a charity and advocacy body founded in 2014 that has advocated for a big ticket levy.

While the proposed levy would certainly help to level the playing field between grassroots music venues and the big end of touring, the Music Venue Trust was founded on much more radical principles and ambitions than simple redistribution.

Socialising live music

Although the Music Venue Trust has moved into advocacy and policy work, such as vocal support for the big ticket levy, the trust’s original and continuing mission is to socialise grassroots music venues. This means they work to help venues transition away from for-profit models and towards alternative ownership structures.

The trust’s “Own Our Venues” campaign spawned Music Venue Properties, a charitable landlord funded by the broader music community. The scheme has now purchased five grassroots venues around the UK, leased on the condition they continue to run as live music venues.

The goal is to take the profit motive out of running a venue. Surplus is reinvested into venue spaces, ensuring their long-term sustainability.

As the trust’s founder and CEO Mark Davyd states, “[the community] is the best person to own a venue”.

We don’t want money going to private landlords, we want it in the cultural economy because that’s the way we generate more great artists and give more people the opportunity to be involved in music.

Acknowledging that such radical ambitions require funding, the trust have been long term advocates for a big ticket levy. However, this advocacy has always accompanied their greater goal of socialising live music venues.

The trust have helped to change the broader cultural understanding of grassroots venues in the UK. Between 2014 and 2022, the proportion of music venues in the country run as not-for-profit ventures increased from 3% to 26%.

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