These venues are where you get booed the first time
Across more than fifty venues this weekend, thousands of artists are performing in the smallest rooms they can find — not out of modesty, but out of urgency. The UK's grassroots music scene, which has lost over a third of its clubs since the pandemic and shed six thousand jobs, is staging a collective act of witness called Everywhere At Once. These intimate spaces are not merely entertainment infrastructure; they are the incubators where artistic identity is forged, where genres are born, and where the next generation learns what it means to stand before an audience. The question being asked, quietly but insistently, is whether a culture that loses its smallest stages can sustain its largest ones.
- Three nightclubs are closing every month in the UK, and over half of those still open failed to turn a profit last year — the sector is not in decline, it is in freefall.
- Six thousand jobs have vanished, business rates relief was denied to grassroots venues even as their rateable value surged 56% since 2017, and rising costs are pushing owners toward impossible choices.
- The Everywhere At Once festival is the industry's most visible counter-move — placing artists like Fatboy Slim and Becky Hill in sixty-person rooms to force the public and press to reckon with what is disappearing.
- Patchwork solutions are emerging — Harry Styles donating nearly a million pounds, city councils offering modest grants, larger venues sharing ticket revenue — but advocates say voluntary goodwill cannot substitute for structural policy.
- Calls for a mandatory £1 levy on arena tickets and a VAT cut are growing louder, but the government has kept the scheme voluntary, and major promoters are opting out, leaving the crisis without a systemic answer.
Glastonbury's rare year off has opened a gap in the summer calendar, and this weekend the music industry is filling it with something deliberately, defiantly small. The Everywhere At Once festival, organized by the Music Venue Trust, has placed over two thousand artists in intimate venues across the country — Fatboy Slim in a sixty-capacity room in Brighton, Becky Hill previewing new music in her Worcester hometown, Tinie Tempah performing across three cities in a single weekend. The gesture is both celebration and alarm signal.
The numbers behind it are sobering. Since the pandemic, 37% of UK clubs have closed. More than half of surviving venues failed to make a profit last year. Three nightclubs shut every month. Changes to national insurance and business rates have cost the sector six thousand jobs, and in February, grassroots venues were excluded from business rates relief even as their rateable value climbed 56% since 2017. The financial architecture that once allowed these spaces to survive on thin margins has quietly collapsed.
For artists who came up through these rooms, the loss is not abstract. Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze recalls learning to hold an audience — loving or indifferent — in tiny, raucous London gigs in the 1970s. Tinie Tempah speaks of the formative power of being booed, being cheered, selling out a show where only twenty people showed up. Wolf Alice's Ellie Rowsell says simply: 'We wouldn't have existed without them.' Her bandmate Joff Oddie is blunter still — he no longer knows how young artists are supposed to begin.
Some help is arriving. Harry Styles is donating a pound per ticket from his Wembley residency, raising close to a million pounds for the Music Venue Trust. Cities like Halifax and Liverpool are experimenting with grants and cross-subsidy models. But advocates argue these efforts are patchwork against a structural problem. They are calling for a mandatory levy on arena and stadium tickets and a VAT reduction — measures the government has so far kept voluntary, allowing major promoters to quietly opt out.
Everywhere At Once runs through June 28th. It is, at its core, an industry asking the country to look carefully at what it is on the verge of losing — not just venues, but the conditions that make new music, and new musicians, possible at all.
Glastonbury's year off has left a peculiar gap in the summer calendar, but this weekend, more than two thousand artists are filling it in the most unlikely way possible—by playing rooms so small you could almost touch the stage. Fatboy Slim is spinning records at The Pipeline in Brighton, a venue that holds sixty people. Becky Hill is previewing new material at Marrs Bar in Worcester, her hometown. Rizzle Kicks, Inspiral Carpets, Divine Comedy, and The Lathums are scattered across the country in similar intimate spaces. The festival, called Everywhere At Once, is a deliberate act of rescue.
The Music Venue Trust organized it to shine a light on a crisis that has been quietly unfolding since the pandemic ended. Thirty-seven percent of the UK's clubs have closed. Of those still standing, more than half failed to make a profit last year. Three nightclubs are shutting down every month. The numbers are stark, but the human story underneath them is starker still. These aren't just buildings where people go to drink and dance. They are the places where artists learn their craft, where grime emerged from London's underground, where trip-hop was nurtured in Bristol's clubs, where a young Glenn Tilbrook learned to perform in front of audiences who either loved him or didn't care at all.
Tinie Tempah, performing in Newcastle, Norwich, and Southampton for the festival, understands what's at stake. "We're losing three nightclubs a month," he says. Since the pandemic, people have changed their habits. They go out less. They drink less. But Tempah worries about something deeper: the music scenes that won't exist if the venues disappear. He talks about the first time you get booed on stage, the first time you get cheered, the moment you realize you've sold out a show and only twenty people showed up. These are the moments that build artists. Two decades into his career, his earliest fans still talk about the raves and parties where they first saw him perform.
Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze echoes the concern. He cut his teeth playing tiny, raucous gigs with Jools Holland in 1970s London. "That was really where we learned how to be with an audience that loved you," he says, "or with an audience that weren't interested in you at all and just wanted entertainment." He was lucky to have that opportunity so young. Now, he worries younger artists won't have it at all. London is particularly vulnerable. Venues face rising costs, strict noise regulations, and early curfews. Local authorities, according to Sacha Lord, founder of the Warehouse Project, seem obsessed with limiting hours and limiting fun itself.
The financial pressure is relentless. Changes to national insurance and business rates have cost the sector six thousand jobs. In February, nightclubs and grassroots venues were excluded from business rates relief, even as their rateable value jumped fifty-six percent since 2017. Some cities are trying to help. Halifax's Piece Hall, an outdoor venue holding up to six thousand people, funnels proceeds to subsidize five smaller venues. Liverpool's city council offers grants up to three thousand pounds to venues with fewer than thirty seats. In London, the O2 and Royal Albert Hall donate ticket revenue to the Music Venue Trust. But these efforts are patchwork.
Some major artists are stepping in. Harry Styles is donating a pound from every ticket of his twelve-night Wembley residency to the Music Venue Trust—raising more than nine hundred thousand pounds. Wolf Alice did the same on their latest tour. The band's singer, Ellie Rowsell, says small venues were formative to their existence. "We wouldn't have existed without them," she says. Guitarist Joff Oddie adds a harder truth: "You've got to look at how tough it is for young artists to start out and go on the road. We did so much of that on good favours, sleeping on people's floors. I don't know how anybody does it anymore."
There are calls for government intervention—a one-pound levy on all arena and stadium gigs, or at least a VAT cut. But ministers have kept the scheme voluntary, and major promoters like Live Nation are opting out. Tilbrook argues that legislation is necessary. "If there's no provision for low-key or cheaper entertainment, then those places will disappear," he says. "I've already seen it happen." The Everywhere At Once Festival runs this weekend, June 26 through 28, across more than fifty venues inside London's M25 alone. It is, in essence, a last stand—a moment when the music industry is asking the country to notice what it's about to lose.
Citas Notables
We're losing three nightclubs a month. If we lose those spaces, I just worry what happens.— Tinie Tempah
Small venues were a huge, formative part of our journey. We wouldn't have existed without them.— Ellie Rowsell, Wolf Alice
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does it matter that these small venues close? Aren't there plenty of other places to see live music?
Not really. A stadium holds twenty thousand people. A grassroots venue holds a hundred. They're completely different experiences, and they serve completely different purposes. The small venues are where you learn. Where you fail in front of people who actually care enough to show up.
But couldn't an artist just skip that stage now? Record at home, build an audience online?
Maybe in theory. But every artist who's ever mattered—Tinie Tempah, Ellie Rowsell, Glenn Tilbrook—they all talk about those early gigs as essential. You can't learn how to read a room from a screen. You can't build loyalty that way.
So this is about preserving a pipeline for new talent.
It's that, but it's also about preserving something cultural. Grime came from London's underground clubs. Trip-hop came from Bristol. If those spaces disappear, where does the next movement come from?
The article mentions that people are going out less since the pandemic. Is that the real problem—changing behavior—rather than policy?
It's both. Yes, people changed their habits. But venues are also being squeezed by rising costs, noise regulations, early curfews. In London especially, it feels like the city is actively trying to make nightlife harder. That's a choice, not just a trend.
What would actually save these venues?
Money, mostly. A VAT cut would help. A mandatory levy on big arena gigs would help. But right now, the government is keeping it voluntary, and the big promoters are opting out. So we're left with individual artists donating and cities doing what they can. It's not enough.