TMT:105 Alex Bruford On Fixing Live’s Economics

And our first story comes from CMU, which looks at the new report for the UK government analysing the impact of Brexit on UK musicians.

The findings show that the number of European gigs by UK musicians in 2024 was down 21% compared to 2019, with the music industry and other performing arts sectors losing £208 million in gross value added and around 2,500 jobs as a result.

Alex, you're at the sharp end of this, looking at shows in Europe.

Do these figures tally with your experience? Yeah, they

certainly do.

I mean, we've known it's been a major setback, but to actually see the numbers written down like that, it's really a stark reminder of just how damaging Brexit has been to the touring industry and the creative industry as a whole.

So, yeah, no, it's been really

problematic.

I guess if you're trying to break an artist... then European touring is a big part of the picture, right? So is it so much more difficult to do now if you can't just jump in a van and go over there? Absolutely,

absolutely.

I think, you know, we always try and build our artists across multiple territories simultaneously.

You never know whether it's going to be the Dutch who go for the artist first or the Germans who go for the artist first or the Spanish.

But, you know, back in the day, you could jump in a van for €1,000, cover your costs, make it all work, come home and... would be just about make sense but now it's not possible to do that it costs too much money to do that so yeah it's really challenging for the new artists to get out there and tour and play and go and have those opportunities that they need take those opportunities they need to to progress their careers in mainland europe

yeah i mean i guess identifying the problem is is one thing isn't it fixing it quite another what would you like to see happen to sort of make things easier

Well, I think we just have to push to try and bring the relationship closer together again.

I know the previous Culture Secretary, Ian Murray, had been working on removing some of those barriers.

Not much progress has been made so far.

We really need the new Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, to pick up the baton and keep pushing.

You know, for us, there's just so many barriers around paperwork, carnets, A1 certificates, the 90-180 day rule, huge increase in costs for the artists and on the admin side.

So anything we can do to ease some of those pressures is going to make it easier and more viable for artists to get out to Europe.

Yeah, touring is an expensive business anyway at the moment, right? Absolutely.

Yeah, it really is.

I think unless you've actually sat down with an artist tour budget and see how the numbers stack up, it's hard to see just how painful it can be and how difficult it can be for artists to get off the road.

which is why many of my international artists, their tours are just getting shorter and shorter because every gig that you add outside of the main cities costs the tour more money, which means you have a shorter tour, which is obviously not what we want because we want our artists to go out and visit all the grassroots venues and tour extensively, but the finances are often dictating that that's not possible.

Yeah, okay, well,

And our first story comes from CMU, which looks at the new report for the UK government analysing the impact of Brexit on UK musicians.

The findings show that the number of European gigs by UK musicians in 2024 was down 21% compared to 2019, with the music industry and other performing arts sectors losing £208 million in gross value added and around 2,500 jobs as a result.

Alex, you're at the sharp end of this, looking at shows in Europe.

Do these figures tally with your experience? Yeah, they

certainly do.

I mean, we've known it's been a major setback, but to actually see the numbers written down like that, it's really a stark reminder of just how damaging Brexit has been to the touring industry and the creative industry as a whole.

So, yeah, no, it's been really

problematic.

I guess if you're trying to break an artist... then European touring is a big part of the picture, right? So is it so much more difficult to do now if you can't just jump in a van and go over there? Absolutely,

absolutely.

I think, you know, we always try and build our artists across multiple territories simultaneously.

You never know whether it's going to be the Dutch who go for the artist first or the Germans who go for the artist first or the Spanish.

But, you know, back in the day, you could jump in a van for €1,000, cover your costs, make it all work, come home and... would be just about make sense but now it's not possible to do that it costs too much money to do that so yeah it's really challenging for the new artists to get out there and tour and play and go and have those opportunities that they need take those opportunities they need to to progress their careers in mainland europe

yeah i mean i guess identifying the problem is is one thing isn't it fixing it quite another what would you like to see happen to sort of make things easier

Well, I think we just have to push to try and bring the relationship closer together again.

I know the previous Culture Secretary, Ian Murray, had been working on removing some of those barriers.

Not much progress has been made so far.

We really need the new Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, to pick up the baton and keep pushing.

You know, for us, there's just so many barriers around paperwork, carnets, A1 certificates, the 90-180 day rule, huge increase in costs for the artists and on the admin side.

So anything we can do to ease some of those pressures is going to make it easier and more viable for artists to get out to Europe.

Yeah, touring is an expensive business anyway at the moment, right? Absolutely.

Yeah, it really is.

I think unless you've actually sat down with an artist tour budget and see how the numbers stack up, it's hard to see just how painful it can be and how difficult it can be for artists to get off the road.

which is why many of my international artists, their tours are just getting shorter and shorter because every gig that you add outside of the main cities costs the tour more money, which means you have a shorter tour, which is obviously not what we want because we want our artists to go out and visit all the grassroots venues and tour extensively, but the finances are often dictating that that's not possible.

Yeah, okay, well,