 Oeddi'r ffordd, oeddi'r ffordd. Mae'r leisio yma wedi'i wneud gwneud os oedd. Mae'n eu ffordd o'r hun telemuniau ar gyfer maesiaid ag siormau i'r hyfforddiadau ar Fyryddol yn eich mynd ar gyfer hyn o'r pwg. Felly, mae'n Machell Tomson, msp. Rhaid i'n belaid i ddim yn ddigwyddniru mewn gwahanol ac yn ddadwg i ddim yn gweld â'r 23 yn oeddiadau Feissalol. Mae'n 19 yr yddy, iawn i roi'r blaen yw'r amlwg mae'r parolimant yn bligwadu'r poliadau a'r poliadau. Mwndten sydd fyanken i'w p hyd yn y parolimant mewn gweloddau ac yn meddwl iawn i'r poliadau. Mwnddeddem o gŵr taethau ffarty i ddrwg yng Nghymru o fy mod i'r rhai. Ie, rwy'n gallu ei oed yn ymgyrchu am fwy o hwnnw. Ie, rwy'n gallu mwyfyn ysbryd mysgol. Ier, mae'r ffarty i'r mwyfyn oherwydd erioed yn ysbyg. Felly, mae'r ffordd o'r gweithio y cyfrifiadau yn ymwneud o gweithio. Ond, dyma'r gwaith ymyrch gŷn gweithio'r panlissau, ac yn y troedd, mae yn ddiddorol fel y mae'n ddiddorol ac mae'n ddiddorol fel gwath i'r gwlad, mae'n ddiddorol i'n ddiddorol i'r gwlad. Mae'r ddiddorol i'r ddiddorol i'r ddiddorol. Beth i chi'n ddiddorol i'r ddiddorol, Y quwitrick yw'r dweud cyfnod yng Nghymru Gweinidog, ac mae'r cyflwyngau cyd-dwyngoedd yma yn ymweld ac yn ymweld gan unrhyw dros ym Mhwylwg. Felly, nid o'n gyfaint o Hamesh Hawke, mae'n ddweud, nid o'n gyfaint o Hamesh Hawke, mae'n ddweud, Ac byw'n gwoes bwysig o'r panlidol ac dwi'n cael ei fyddion o'r gwaith o'r gweithio'r gwrthau. Felly oes byw'n gwneud i mhwylwssgau, ac nid o'n gallu gael iawn i gael gwell burden waith gweld. Ac nid o'n gweithio'r gweithio blwyddyn, mae'n meddwl a chnymwch i chi rannu bwysig, ac mae wneud i ddim yn gweithio i rhan gwaith i gael bwysig a'n gweithio. OK, dyn ni'n gynhwg o'r gwaith i yw'r hoffau, dyn ni'n gynhwg t tot yw'r hemau, fe fydd hi'n gwneud o'r hoffau bod y bydd hynny'n gweithio'n gwneud o wybodaeth front mewn gwiel i ddylai ystyried gyda'r cyfeilio'. Rwy'n ymddus, dyn ni'n gwneud, a yn ddych chi. Rwy'n gweithio'. Mae ymddangosr. Beth yna'n gwirion gydig a wnaeth ei wneud nad odd adael iawn i gyda'r cwrs dyngo gyda'r hanes ac rydyn ni'n ddweud o'r ystod o'r ysgrifennu, ac mae'r ystod o'r gwaith gweithio a'r ystod o'r ystod o'r gweithio, o'r cyflodau, o'r cyflodau a'r cyflodau a'r cyflodau a'r cyflodau, os i'r cethon i mi ddod i. Yn ymweld yma, mae'r gwaith. Ac y gallwn gwneud o'r hyfforddiol ar yr angen o'r gweithio a'r angen o'r angen o'r angen o'r ystod o'r gweithio a'r angen o'r gweithio. fuel shows. I should credit a guy called Will Page, who is a really good data guy in live music and used to work for Spotify, used to work for PRS, and he wrote a really good article on music business world, which is a good trade publication that went through these numbers. gwnaeth gwestiwyr ar y dyn nhw, ac toi dweud bod yn 2022, yna mae'r 12,000 dyn nhw'n cael 2bmg ferfawr. A wnaeth 2019 yna mwyn amser 5600 dyn nhw. Rwy'n gwneud hynny yn dyn nhw'n ddechrau i hyffredin a rhaid ei 몰� ymddangos cyd-dweud i hyffredin, wrth ein bod chi'n gweinio'r cyfeiri, rhaid hwnno, ond rhaid hwnnau rhaid. Mwyaf o gwylteniol y Llywodraeth ac Rhaol. Dwi'n rhaid i gael ddatblygu maen nhw ceisio ysbrydau a'w dysgol gweld i'w Llywodraeth, ac mae'r pethai angenwyd yn yn fawr. Yr unrhyw ysbryd o'r tanig, mynd i chi'n ymddangos i chi mewn teimlo a fyddai' pleasegol yma ar y syniar ar hyn yn oed. Y wneud yn imeddiad yn rhan oר. Wel, yma efallai piwn ymddir i amlwg ymddangos cyfathiaeth mewn gwirionedd au'r gwybl ydymeth yma y bydd y byddai adjust yn alles, ac mae'n sei efallai, fel y gwirionedd, yma ar eyllai, oed, oed, eu hefyd, yw'r holl, yna yng nglyder gweithio'r feddwl. Felly mae'n fewn gwirionedd yw'r holl, maen nhw'n meddwl, iawn oherwydd bod y prysgaf wedi cyhoedwch ymddangos iawn cael bod yn ganun ohr ac mae sicrhau iawn o'r sefydliadau shefnol. Felly, we've read about Taylor Swift selling tickets for next year, or Beyonce doing a massive show, big names that go all across the UK to arenas, or do big open air shows. However, where things are really struggling is a grassroots music level, and in our grassroots music venues across the UK, so Scotland equal to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, there are fewer shows, there are lower audience levels, and venues are really struggling, and in fact having worked very hard in all the nations to ensure that venues mostly made it through Covid, we're actually losing a grassroots music venue in the UK at a rate of one a week at the moment. Is that the reason why you've set up the trust? Well, we set up the trust a few years ago because we were worried about venues closing, and there was definitely a trend, and so we were actually nine years into the work. Ironically, in 2019 we'd reached a point where it looked like the work that we'd put in and gathering venues together as a music venues alliance was starting to pay off because at the end of 2019, for the first time, we had more opening than closing venues. Then of course Covid hit, and during the pandemic things got very tough, but it's actually tougher now for venues, and so thank goodness we were established in 2014 and already gathered our network and started to have the messaging and create statistics because you know that nothing speaks louder than facts and figures, and in fact, going to wave these around, we published our first annual report at the beginning of this year for the figures for 2022, and that showed some really worrying trends, like the fact that grassroots music venues have a profit margin of 0.2%. So they're investing an extraordinary amount, but it's costing more and more. We actually think that profit margin is going to be eroded by the time we produce the reports online, isn't it? This report is online yet and there's some copies here if anyone would like to have a copy. And so Hamish, what's your perspective and that of your peers, if you can? I mean it's a difficult question to answer, simply because from a personal perspective there's absolutely no doubt that post pandemic there is a sort of renewed energy and vigor sort of in audiences coming to gigs and saying to us at the merch table or saying to us after the show, oh, it's so great to see live music again. And you can't help but feel invigorated by that because me and a lot of my peers during the pandemic, and it was the same across lots of industries and lots of fields, it felt like either it could be some kind of death knell for the entire industry, but for artists on a personal level, they didn't know what was going to happen. There was absolutely no knowing whether you'd come out the other end of it. So there is definitely a certain optimism and a willingness to engage on the part of audiences when certainly when I see them on the road at grassroots venues. And the audience engagement in terms of ticket sales has been incredible and I only speak from a personal perspective, but whilst I've been touring over the past couple of years and it's maybe about four or five tours in that time, it's, yeah, the engagement has really been astounding. That said, backstage in the green room and when you're talking to the people who are these venues, who are absolutely the sort of lifeblood of the entire outfit, as it were, it's a really different story and it's actually quite difficult to be optimistic in the face of that. They're really, really struggling. Grassroots venues on a national level are operating on a 0.2% profit margin, 0.2%. So it's just a knife edge and it's going to take a huge amount of sort of concerted effort to improve that situation or even just to keep it as it is. It's a really perilous situation. It sounds that, and all of you are clearly articulating the issues around the current cost of living crisis and that stat about a 0.2% margin in the level of inflation we have is utterly staggering. So we all understand that's a huge challenge but is it the only challenge that we've got? I notice we've not yet touched on the kind of ecosystem of the infrastructure and the like and I'm interested in... We understand that's a challenge but what else might other people not be aware of as a challenge? Well, I mean, even before the current situation venues... I'll come at this from a venue perspective because it's what I know best and they're hard to run, they're hard to build and they're hard to make money from even at arena and stadium levels so not 0.2% hard but they only really work when you get all the other bits aligned with it. So, and we'll talk about this hopefully a bit later but when private operators get involved, they want to have the ticketing, they want to have the sponsorship, they want to have the venues around it because the actual core bit of business that is a venue, they're not actually very good at making money in and of themselves. What they're brilliant at is stimulating all the area around them. So if you put an arena into a town that's a new arena, it will stimulate the night time economy and we've seen that, we know that works but it doesn't make them any easier to build because unless you do the sort of walled garden bit of keeping everything together, the finances don't stack up. So it was already hard, it's got harder and then with the cost of living, what you're then seeing and it's classic, I used to work at Wemby Stadium and years ago 2008 sort of credit crunch time, what you saw was with the ticket prices that there were. They used to typically be about five or six in the stadium at the top end stayed okay, the cheapest stayed okay but the mid market just gets destroyed and you see that in the ticket categories and hospitality in general business as well and that's happening again now. So an already difficult business has got harder which is fine, people adapt but that is where I think we could all be a bit smarter certainly in terms of how we work with government and I think what the music venue trust has done in terms of engaging with governments and just banging the drum better has been great kind of the rest of the industry needs to do a bit of that as well and it's amazing actually to be in a parliament building and be here because most of the time we just get ignored. So. That doesn't happen in the Scottish Parliament. You've touched on quite a few themes there that I think we're going to go on and explore further the kind of GVA, the gross value added of music and venues and the appetite of politicians at whatever appropriate level but we'll stay in the theme have we captured all the challenges Beverly? Is it really worse? There will be a bit we'll cheer everyone up by the way. I mean I think what I would add about the grassroots music venue sector that is different to larger scale venues is the ownership model and it's something you and I have spoken about before Michelle where 93% of grassroots music venues operate in buildings with a private landlord and that means that they're also subject to the vagaries of the property market and that makes it even more challenging and length of lease is also an issue when you come to looking at your business model and your economic sustainability as well as your environmental sustainability and you know issues like that the average lease length in our sector is I think 18 months left on a lease which gives you no real ability to plan for the future so while you're looking at the bills at the moment and you know the current difficult situation you're adding that element to it and we have had some success in this last year we came up to Scotland and we launched the owner venues scheme which is a pilot scheme to collectively buy, start buying grassroots music venues and in fact we have one Glasgow venue in the original cohort of nine venues that we were crowdfunding for the Glad Café is part of that project and collectively we did raise £2.5 million and the purchases of buildings have started but when you consider that there are around 900 grassroots music venues in the UK that could be a very long process to secure them and make them more financially secure with a benevolent landlord that ensures those buildings stay as venues because at the moment what we see is some landlords will just look at a grassroots music venue and go actually you're a really terrible tenant and if I don't renew your lease I'll be able to use this building for something else which obviously doesn't really happen at an arena because they're purpose built and less often at mid-level although obviously mid-level is slightly more precarious and this is a huge area and again I think people can read more about what you're trying to achieve with the purchase of these venues on your website can't they? There, shame this plug for you. Great answer isn't it? Yes, musicvenuitrust.com Thank you Michelle. And so Hamish, we've covered off some challenges but one of the things that's been of interest to me is the extent to which beyond the cost of living crisis that is flowing into everything that Brexit's also been a challenge for and that's something that we've not covered yet what's your perspective from a performing musician? You know certainly as an independent musician so essentially what I'm speaking as an unsigned musician someone who and my band, I speak for my band as well obviously we're trying to do things off our own backs for the most part and since Brexit the costs of touring in Europe I mean we were talking earlier about the sort of percentage increase in how much it might cost to tour Europe hypothetically and it's somewhere in the region of 25% and that might sound negligible but when you consider the... Not on a 0.2% margin, it definitely does not. But when you consider the overheads for touring ordinarily it's the difference between being able to tour and not being able to tour and you start seeing, you know if I may address a sort of greater philosophical point for me and Beverly and I were discussing this earlier on something that I'm aware of is there seems to be a sort of difference between what is popularly understood of how musicians tend to operate and what the music industry really looks like and there's a kind of world of what the industry looks like and then there's the reality of how musicians actually earn their crust and there's a huge... There are just two completely different realities and so to be able to tour at all and make a profit is difficult enough in this country to then add the increased regulation of the red tape surrounding touring in Europe these days bands are simply not able to do it and they're not going abroad anymore and there's something you hear quite a lot of lip service being paid to the cultural exports of the UK or of Scotland and the UK this sort of... all we're so proud of our musical heritage and it's the sex pistols and all remember back in the 60s where it was all these bands it's just not... we don't live in that world anymore and the amount of support that is being given to bands to be able to export this music it's just not there and so unsurprisingly European festivals are now opting for very few Scottish or British bands to come and represent the British Isles it just... and it's a loss for us and so when I say I'm addressing a wider philosophical point I want to address that there needs to be more value placed on these exports in people's minds it's not merely a financial value although it is a colossal financial value it is... it's so much greater than that and we're losing it so quickly it's quite frightening to me anyway and staying on you then we are here today in the Scottish Parliament what do you think specifically that the Scottish Government can do to help assist matters and I'll ask you all that but staying in yourself, English now, well for me personally I must say creative Scotland is an incredible asset and it comes down to of giving more towards that creative Scotland budget the things that sort of my contemporaries have been able to do thanks to creative Scotland it's amazing and I am personally so grateful to them for allowing me to record some of my albums and I think it comes down to investing more greatly in creative Scotland and you use an interesting term there that I must admit we did chat about earlier seeing that as an investment spend rather than subsidy exactly that's a way of thinking about it and so what's your thoughts Beverly having dealt with both governments at UK level and at Scottish level what more can the Scottish Government do? I think there's a really interesting continuation of the idea of investment but it's not necessarily about asking Scottish Government for money it's more about adding a voice and guiding a concept about who should be responsible for the future of music in Scotland and on that we're doing a lot of work at the moment looking at models around the world and looking at the French model and saying well there are really admirable things about that but we don't think it's right for the UK because what happens in France is that music is taxed in order to create a pot of money to reinvest in future music development however what it goes to development wise is not necessarily the sort of music that generates the money and what we'd really like to see and what we're talking to governments across the UK about is encouraging the music industry to look at its own research and development and to invest in artist development venue development the future of where there are arena and stadium headliners will come from and we believe that government can be a really powerful voice in that of saying most industries invest in research and development cultural industries not so much there's sort of this assumption that all of the UK is a world leader in culture I mean music is particularly strong in obviously Scottish music is known the world over but other countries are investing in the future of their music and their music exports as Hamish said and the level in the UK is low because there seems to be in some quarters absolutely not yours but in some political quarters the sort of thing of oh culture will be fine and culture won't be fine on its own it needs direction, it needs championing and it needs support so one of the things that the concepts that we're talking about a lot is a venue levy where the more successful bits of the music industry the bits that we kind of started with reinvest some of that profit from the big tours, the big gigs back in grassroots artists, grassroots venues the places that will help develop the future headliners and that just doesn't exist in the UK at the moment and you've touched on a really interesting theme that I'm going to open up that sort of virtuous cycle of what the music industry itself can be doing to understand that you need to bring people in at the grassroots level to furnish these venues because we all succeed from each other so have you got some additional thoughts to add about that, Jim? A few there's I think we need to look at how government generally interacts with the industry in terms of the tax rates but certainly relative to Europe so we pay more VAT, we pay higher taxes, I think there's venues and there's artists in the most other European countries so probably need to have a look there and can I jump in there, have any conversations been had cos obviously that's a purely reserved responsibility of the UK government about a variation of that? Yeah it was I think there was through live which is a sort of overarching body there was relief in Covid times but it's just gone back up then PRS which is basically a tax on live events which goes back to the songwriters which is not a bad thing but eats into things licensing and planning are huge areas cos it's really hard to get licence issues resolved when you trust talk rightly about things like agent of change that applies the principle of if you move into somewhere and there's already a venue there if you complain it was there so the thing that was there first should get recognition of being there first rather than buy a flat opposite night in day in Manchester and then I get to complain about it which has been a fairly notorious case going on for a while things like that but you know just little things like we tax if there's lots of venue owners here they sell a pint of beer they're taxed on it far more than a supermarket and you think what happens with that system is that then it's the same for pubs I used to work in the brewery sector we're just incentivising what all the kids do now which is to get loaded up pre-loading at home and then have one or two drinks when they go to the venue why when pubs and music venues are such an important part of who we are do we incentivise that and incentivise supermarkets over the actual venues themselves why do we tax one the same product way more in one than the other it is literally chalk and cheese and it's been going like that all the way through so you're like you know one is a communal experience that binds people together and we don't have many of those like big experiences that make us as a society now because all the things that used to do that a bit more a lot of them are just fallen away and that like organised religion is much lesser part of our lives I'm not arguing for that but I'm just saying those things have sort of fallen away a bit so why do we incentivise people to drink at home and then all the problems that go with that it doesn't make any sense to me so there's lots but it's and also you know just at the right time listening and engaging with people so there might be a particular venue that's under threat or struggling and it might be that a developer somewhere else wants to build something but has a basement space they don't really know what to do with the venue that's struggling with stupid rent and low margins might suit that space there and that has happened occasionally but we know that that works and is a good model so there's models that are out there already there's councils through throughout England, throughout the UK that have actually said we want a night time economy and gone and invested in venues and they've got the GVA to prove it you know you look at how vibrant Leeds is you look at Cardiff which has got a stadium a small arena existing in his building arena they're doing it because they know it works you know so there are models for sort of that public sector cooperation that can happen they're there we just need to bring them out a bit more and you've articulated so clearly the complexity in all these different parts that pull together but I suppose my question to you Hamish is what more can the industry itself be doing as well as government we've had a thread earlier from Beverly as to what government could do and some good suggestions about the industry but again from your perspective as a performer what would you like to see more of from the industry itself I think that's the thing I mean what Jim was pointing at in my mind was essentially there seems to be a kind of there seems to be the grassroots level and then this sort of other level this sort of stadiums and arenas and they seem to be treated as two completely separate entities but they are one will sustain the other and it could be this cycle this really that could be well I think it seems it almost seems well we say that word investment you know it's an investment in the future and I think it could really be quite a beautiful thing if you had say you know if you had say a certain percentage of every ticket sale from every stadium or arena show a certain percentage of that going in to sustain the grassroots level and I could speak as someone who performs in grassroots venues I know that's something that bands would support I know that it's something that people who are actually perform on these stages it's exactly the kind whether it's we were talking about Coldplay earlier on I know that I could I could assume quite comfortably that members of Coldplay would be quite up for that sort of thing well that's well I've heard myself say that we wrote an open letter to them and they haven't responded yet oh there you go I can in my role as convener can issue that called Coldplay please respond to Beverly's letter but staying on this theme and you've touched Beverly and what happens over overseas have you got models where you've seen it being done right and what impact does that have through some of the threads that we've talked on today I think it's quite hard to find a perfect model because obviously there's an intention that sometimes when it progresses doesn't go quite the way you might have thought it would there are definitely some really interesting models in Europe and it's a really interesting time to be looking at Europe because certainly Westminster don't want to hear anything about Europe so that's tricky because we have a long relationship with similar organisations to ours in European countries and you know we know about their own research and there's a lot more subsidy for grassroots venues because it's understood that grassroots artists rely on grassroots venues that just doesn't exist in the UK at all I think the attitude in the UK is much more free market you know well somebody will open a venue if one closes and of course that's becoming much more difficult to do I think the sort of cultural funding sector is a really interesting one because you've always got to sort of say well what's inside the envelope and what's outside the envelope and Hamish talked about Creative Scotland and we worked really closely with them during the pandemic and absolutely got the support where it needed to go which was great but the history of cultural funding in the UK is kind of a tricky one because there's always the sort of high arts or traditional arts that when push comes to shove they kind of claim more of a call on the funding because traditionally they've needed the support so you often get people saying well opera's really expensive of course it needs all the funding and you're like well opera is really expensive but a big rock show could be really expensive as well and you don't expect that to get any subsidy at all so there's interesting models where as I say in France there's a great model from the point of view that 3.5% of the profits then goes into a pot and you can apply for money if you think what you're doing may not break even and that's really great but we know that some of that money from the big pop and rock shows ends up supporting opera and so I think there's a thing of looking around everywhere I mean some of our work started with models in Canada and Australia and you know we work closely with even now in America and it's that bit of taking what looks good but also being a little bit aware of what doesn't quite work and trying to come up with your own version of what's right for the UK because there's always a certain amount of adaptation but what I do know at the moment is an awful lot of countries are actively investing in musicians and what they need to develop in a way that the UK is quite behind because of the unique challenges we have in the UK at the moment Yeah so let's open that up and I want to come to yourself now Jim I agree with what you're saying Beverly, my experience when I was training was that people imagined that I spent my day saying darling I feel a symphony coming on they had no idea about the rigor and the discipline and the complexity and so on and to be honest I see that general ignorance permeating many elements of society but investment in something this is a term that we keep coming back to so Jim I'm interested in your view for investors and following on from a financial perspective this concept of an ecosystem what you see is the opportunities for investors and what are the challenges and you talked about high end, low end but what are the opportunities similarly to the way we would treat any other sector by creating a market if you like Yeah well I don't want to I mean Beverly will talk about it doesn't actually take that much to sort of really sort out the grass roots and from my perspective with like arenas and stadia they're hard to build you know they are they're not great buildings in pure economic terms you know you're better off building a care home or something like that really these days than you are building a music venue but there is an opportunity and I'm right now engaged in a scheme in England where I'm trying to get a proposed small medium size arena off the ground and we've finally got buying from the council we've got buying from a group of developers we think we have funding but getting it to planning is the real challenge so there's two real stages that are hard it's the initial bit then there's getting it to planning and I know there was a proposal saw one for a proposal an arena around Edinburgh near Lothian and they were quoting more money than this but I reckon it would take about a million two million quid to get to planning that's quite hard because no one really wants to come in at that stage they'll come in after when you've got planning and the site and everything else but not at that bit so I think there is a role to look at some kind of co-investment or seed funding or something that pays back better because you're coming in at a higher stage but you know it's an investment not a subsidy so if you're coming in at a higher stage you should get bigger rewards later that sort of thing and we're looking there in that one with a regional mayor at whether they could come in at that point and do exactly that kind of thing a shareholding which gets rewarded better than the people who come in later so I think there's a potential role there it's a bit of a dirty word in England at the minute because there's so many councils that have lost hideous amounts of money within betting on property and are going bust so you need to be careful about woking being the classic example where they're brick to brick company I don't understand it but they got it really wrong so there are councils that have taken on an entrepreneurial view so it's a really bad moment to go to councils and talk about that but we're doing it but that kind of thing might work yeah so I can see a role there for at that level long-term patient capital because you know many companies of pension companies in particular I've seen so many risks where they previously would have bet on a bank and you know who would have bet on a bank now a days yeah okay right so carrying on then what does government need to do to persuade the live industry to invest and how well are they persuading government so how well are sorry how well is the industry persuading government and what does government need to do I it's a difficult question in that I genuinely I think I don't want to necessarily return to what I was saying earlier but I think there is a not a misunderstanding exactly but well a non understanding of how the industry really works and how and what it means for the people who participate in it for example we were talking about the difference between classical music and popular music see there's quite a lot of tax relief that you get for being an orchestra and a traveling orchestra and it's yeah orchestral tax relief you can you can apply for and it's for non amplified sound for groups of people over 12 now with a band you might have five people on the stage you might have four people on the stage so if you did acoustic oh in 12 and had more than 12 of you yeah then you might apply for orchestral tax yeah okay but if you're a band you might have five people on the stage but you'll have a sound engineer because it's amplified sound and you might well have a lighting engineer and you'll have staff at the venue and you'll have you know management and promotional teams and PR and all the source you know I speak as someone who you know I play under my own name and my band is my name essentially but there's a whole team of people behind me and the cost for us to you know whether it's just you know hiring a van paying for the fuel hiring of equipment then there's obviously the the travel itself accommodation food on top of that paying the session fees for the musicians you've got and that's just that's before you even leave your rider of course the rider that's the yeah the Bollinger and that not not but there's it's it's so much more and and this you know there is no musician at my level that I could say pays themselves it just doesn't happen it's just not feasible you know I've been on to you as I say four or five times in the past couple of years and me my guitarist and my drummer were essentially sort of a company within the band we don't pay ourselves the band makes enough money just to continue its own operations and in the hope that someday that balance might tip and that we might be able maybe once to pay ourselves a minimum wage once once a one month you know that's the whole I promised we were going to cheer everyone up don't it sounds it honestly this is what I mean by the the reality being so different to what is popularly understood is because and obviously I understand there's people in this audience who know exactly what I'm talking about but it's it sounds perverse but it's not the only you know it's just yesterday in fact I was talking to a friend of mine who's a Scottish album of the year award winner award-winning singer-songwriter critically acclaimed singer-songwriter many of you will know who this person is and we were discussing how it is on a weekly basis that you have to reckon with yourself as a musician my passion for this job how much meaning it affords my life how much it means to me to be able to write a song play it, tour it have people come up to you and say I heard that song when I was going through A, B or C my mum heard that song my brother heard that song he shared it with me blah blah how much that means to me and how truly I can't even put it into words how much that means to me to be able to experience that you have to rec you have to put that against how you are not able to sustain yourself at all on the money that you might make from it and this this singer-songwriter was saying listen I've got a daughter and a dog and a flat and a life and I I can't I can't budge I've got no there's nothing and there's no support and it's just as I said what's popularly understood and it's not even uncommon that people might think this this sort of you see this sort of mystical thing on stage because that's what that's what theatre is you know that's what these performances do they're absolutely magical we've probably all been to to a gig at some point in our lives and had that kind of transportive experience where you go oh my god I don't you don't even understand what's happening on the stage because it's it's not you know it could happen down here but if it happens up here it's something else entirely and we've all had those experiences and so we put musicians in this other place and imagine them as this kind of idealised version of I'm sure they're fine thing you know they're or you know they might be the tortured artists but they might be able to you know rub two pennies together to get some food but it's just not like that and I you know this last tour I did in February talking to Jim earlier on about this the capacities of the venues around about 600 700 and I'm absolutely astounded and so privileged to be able to play venues like that and to have the tickets sell out it's just the it's the stuff of my life it's amazing but there's no profit from that that isn't how that works and to other people when you talk to people about it as they say to me at gigs they say oh I can't believe you're selling your own merch and I'm saying who do you think's selling my merch who do you think who's going to sell my merch you know it's not you know when we say that your system is broken it's not a system it's not a system a system functions in some sense well we have an ecosystem but it's not a fully functioning ecosystem and I obviously I speak as a musician but if I may as you know I can't speak on behalf of the MVT but this is this this extends to venue staff and to venues themselves it's it's almost like local governments and the British government are just hoping to some sense they can keep this in the background and not really think about it too much and continue as I say to pay certain lip service to this incredible musical heritage that the UK has but it's that was at a point where it was well we don't live in that world anymore and I think I mean I'm so humbled listening to you talking so passionately about what you do and particularly the meaning within music which I think we haven't really touched on but that's that's how it gets as Grabs is here and I think that's probably a good time to allow the audience to come in with some questions now the staff here have got some roving mics so if you could pop your your hand up excellent we've got a gentleman here I see him it's on yeah great there's a couple of people today on the panel who've mentioned alcohol and what that has got to do with venues it's pretty clear that most venues hope to be able to pay for the entertainment on stage from the ticket sales and where that doesn't work or we have to pay all the other bills essentially all of Scotland's music venues right up to Barolence and above and I mean you know Jim can talk about what alcohol sales mean to Wembley but you know the if you weren't a big pub doing music essentially whatever the size Wembley size you wouldn't be around anymore and the market trend is that people are drinking less it's been a premium premiumization trend for about 15 years where people are spending more on each drink but they're having far fewer of them and that's turning in some cases into well they're spending less money they're not buying lots of tickets but they're spending big money when they buy a ticket and that's where we see the arenas do particularly well but in Scotland in particular where you know we had the potential ban of alcohol advertising etc and Scottish Government isn't in favour of people drinking more they're probably like people to drink less where's the funding going to come from for venues in the longer term when we continue to see as Scottish Government would like to see a decline in alcohol sales Jim do you want to take that one first? Well I mean that's that is that is the model that existed that you know what you take over the bar is vital that any size of the venue that you've got and it was important that Wembley just as it is you know a grass roots music venue what I would say if I was the government to that is yes it's important that people drink less and the trends that you're seeing are that there are more people who don't drink as well as people drinking less and if that's the case then you get fewer antisocial issues and you get fewer incidents if people are drinking in a more relaxed manner and if you conserve food so if you're with friends and I think you know pubs and venues are more of a moderation on behaviour than people getting tanked up at home and then coming in and standing and doing what they're in the trade is called vertical drinking where you're in this place that you can't sit down you can't get food and you might have a few shots and it's a bit more lairy you know so if from a health perspective I would argue that music venues can be a positive influence so even if people drink less it can be done in a more sociable way and potentially with a food bit which just means that people don't get as tanked up and it's better so I would argue the case therefore that I think music venues can play a positive role in changing that behaviour whilst acknowledging it is a massive massive part of the venues P&L to be able to sell alcohol and make money from it and Beverly I wanted to bring you in here because you mentioned the glad cafe in south side of Glasgow which is a very very well known and vibrant venue how are they approaching this challenge I mean I think the glad is a great example of a community venue that yes it puts gigs on but it does lots of other things as well and for some venues in fact their daytime activity the cafe the food and drink that they sell absolutely is what underpins their ability to put artists on in the evening not every venue is set up like that not every venue has that position in the local community I'm going to say the vast majority of grass roots music venues do have a community around them but not all of them have the ability to have a kitchen to serve food and it's a really interesting idea that everyone could develop that but the nature of a lot of our venues being in non-designed music spaces means that well I mean next venue it's a 100 cap standing space venue there's not even a dressing room let alone a restaurant space and yet it's a thriving music venue because he's found a way to make that work there is no one size fits all but what I would say is the example that Nick's given of alcohol sales decreasing and you know thankfully younger generation drinking less is an even greater argument for the grass roots levy from the more successful bits of the industry that have the higher ticket prices and that are making a profit to reinvest back in the grass roots because at the moment in the 2022 stats in our report Scottish venues invested 8 million pounds in artist development and development of new work if their profits decrease if it becomes even more tenuous than the 0.2% they're going to have less money to support the artists to develop those communities to give those opportunities for the artists to connect with audiences which you know is what live music is all about and so we're going to need that money to come from somewhere else and for decades now it's been assumed that the beer sales will do it and as that changes it just strengthens the arguments that we need to look at other models thank you can I take the next question our gentleman at the back thank you one thing I've I'm kind of well one thing I'm disappointed that you missed out and it's a major key factor in the actual grass roots industry and possibly the backbone and the grass root industry and that's the actual promoters I've been promoting myself I mean the hard work that goes into it and the frustration working with a venue the type of venues that you're actually talking about is you know it's it's disappointing you've not actually picked it up thank you and is there anyone in particular you'd like to pick up that question I think we all understand the importance of promoters and it's probably it's just not fact during the conversation Hayme Strugo to come in at this point so I mean I completely agree with you I mean that's when I've spoken about I've tried I usually especially when I'm performing and when I'm when I'm discussing these things you know on radio or in press one of the things as I mentioned because I perform under my own name there's this assumption that there's this one man island thing and I would be absolutely nowhere without my promoters without my agents without all of these people so yeah no do apologise but I couldn't I couldn't agree more in that there's it's not it's so much there's an entire network here that is suffering and it's not just yeah Beverly do you want to add to that? yeah we're called music venue trust so we always talk more about venues obviously an awful lot of venues have in-house promoters as well as working with external promoters so apologies it's kind of a given that promoter is part of that but part of what we would really like to see because we think it would help explain what Hamish is talking about a lot is I really think that there's an argument that gigs should have credits because when we go to the cinema if you stay and watch the credits you see how many people are involved in the production of that film and okay that's a finished piece of work whereas obviously every live performance is unique that time but if people had any idea of the number of people responsible for bringing that gig to them that night they see who's on stage they may be aware of a lighting and sound engineer but they probably don't know that an artist has a manager and an agent and that a promoter has been involved as well and that you know all the other people that are involved in that continuum in that ecosystem have brought that gig to them and so I think we've got a certain amount of education to do in the UK about speaking more about this mystical thing the music industry and the fact that the artist on the stage are representing all of these other people behind the scenes that are so key to that as well and the skills that are required you know to get cut through in difficult financial times okay let's move on who else have we got for a question Gentleman there a t-shirt Yeah you mentioned how the glad cafe got on like it's a and as an example of like what was seen as a successful Glasgow music venue but I mean I I own a couple of venues The Hargan Pine in Glasgow I'm a director of the voodoo rooms in Edinburgh and I run a promotions company called 432 Presents we put on 700 gigs last year the I mean my understanding I promote maybe 10, 20 gigs a year at the glad cafe and my understanding there is this in Permacrisis you know it's like the they can't afford to pay their bills they can't afford to pay their staff they can't afford to pay anything it's like and this is a this isn't this new thing this is completely ongoing and fundamentally it's like these places go out of business and then come back as new places and probably most of the places that we eat and drink are new limited companies most of the small places that all of us eat and drink are new limited companies after the COVID pandemic and the it's kind of these places are vulnerable and they aren't supported like the Hargan Pine doesn't get any funding whatsoever none we present 350 concerts a year the and that's that is the problem you know it's like there is no tax relief and there is no funding and what would you apart from the the sort of funding because part of the backdrop to this is a chronic shortage of funding which is being felt at at kind of every level and as you'll know the Scottish Government operates to a fixed budget it's not even it's got even very limited borrowing powers compared to even local councils for example have you got anything to add to the earlier thread about innovative ideas where the music industry itself we've had a great one from from Beverly in terms of a levy but your thoughts as well I mean imagine you had a blank checkbook or you could open locked doors to government what would you do? Yeah I think I think I think you've got we've got a lot to learn when we look at quite advanced football models where we are looking at how we develop talent and that is focusing really on creating opportunities for young people very young people getting rid of the restrictive licensing laws associated with live music venues where the live music operators like myself are terrified to let children into the venue in case they drink alcohol which they will of course they will because they will like we were all like we were all 15 and 16 and we were all like going through the transition from being a child to being an adult and but the problem is when those children are on premises and they are drunk they are suddenly a massive glaring problem for us and even when we which we all of us do every time enforce best practice in that situation we are still extremely vulnerable so we find it very difficult to nurture talent when it really needs to be nurtured and we are not and we are not supported to do that so the default thing to do is not to do it that would benefit everybody and funneling money in sorting out the licensing issue and funneling money into supporting young musicians at grassroots venues would be a massive change Can I just pick up on a point you said about football I think it's an interesting parallel where it's not so far from perfect but it exists where in football and the football foundation in England is funded by a mixture of sport england which is the government's sort of encouraging sport quango the Premier League and the FA and they each put roughly speaking 8 to 12 million quid a year in and the net effect to that over 20 years is that grassroots football has benefited to the tune of about a thousand new artificial pitches and improved facilities at grass pitches ydi, ydi, ydi, ydi it's not perfect it was meant to be 5% of the TV money from the Premier League and they did that deal at a time when it was like 140 million a year or something like that Premier League now earns about a billion from UK TV and a billion from overseas rights and if it was truly 5% they'd be putting 160 million quid a year into grassroots football they'd put 12 so it's not perfect but the model is there and it works and what happens is industry and government have kind of come together and acknowledged that if we're not going to do it like France who make it a mandatory provision that every town over a certain size must have a certain amount of leisure provision so if you ever travel through France you go to a small town you will see they have a good tennis court there's like more than a I don't know what the number is it's like 100 people or something but they make it mandatory if something's not a mandatory provision for councils it doesn't happen but an alternative to that is that football foundation model where it is accepted that the money that pours in at the top ends up a bit at the bottom it could be so much better and it's not the model to adopt but the principle is there government puts in money the two big organisations put in money and it sort of works it could be better but Beverly earlier was talking about getting the right models and adapting them if we had something like that in music where artists insist on some kind of levy promoters come together agents come together managers come together venues come together and there is something that goes to grassroots it would go an awful long way Scottish FFA doesn't have as much money as they have south of the border because we did check and they don't have the Premier League TV rights exactly but but there is still reinvestment and and we actually had we had a great conversation with Scottish FFA to you know find out how it works here and absolutely the clubs do have money that then is invested in local communities and in talent development just not on the scale is a really interesting point though in terms of using the models that you've got and improving them when you talk about leisure provision in France and it being a tennis court there's no not necessarily an obstacle to that being a cultural provision or a similar you know a similar model being employed for music venues we're getting I'm sorry I can see you want to come in there Beverly but I'm quite aware of time what I want to do and it may well incorporate this last theme that we're touching on is to give each of the panellists just one minute to sum up some of the things that we've covered off today so I will go back to you now Beverly but I'm going to put a one o'clock gun a one minute gun rather on and then we'll come to your cell Hamish and finish with you I mean I think actually we've touched on this really important theme that that culture is a non-statutory provision in the UK and there's this sort of idea that it will happen automatically and we are an amazing cultural nation you know Scotland's music is incredible but it's because of the determination of individuals not necessarily the fact the infrastructure exists for it to be sustained and and that's the concern that we're addressing here if Scotland's going to continue to have amazing music venues to develop the incredible talent of Scottish artists and connect it with audiences there needs to be a plan it can't just be left to the hope that Scotland will continue to be a musical power that there needs to be a strategy and as Jim said lots of different players need to be involved and there's a role for government in trying to help orchestrate that and help facilitate that conversation because Scottish culture is really important It talks to who we are Hamish your big takeaways from our session today I'm conscious that you wanted to put a smile on people's faces but maybe I'm not the guy so but I think what the judgment was saying is absolutely dead on this is a continually developing crisis it's not it doesn't come and go there are venues that live on that knife edge perennially and it goes for artists the same and it's so long you know so long as musicians are having to pursue their careers as passion projects and so long as venues are having to do the same or this is just something we hope we can cling on to for as long as we can or as long as you know from another personal perspective for as long as Spotify is not an income generating thing it's a promotional tool where people actually engage with their music but you get 0.003 pence per stream that crisis is only going to continue to unfold and I think there needs to be exactly as Beverly said governments need to engage with what they're really dealing with with what this industry is and what it's being built on because it's being built on sand and unless there is real concerted effort that goes towards sustaining it that will allow governments and local authorities too as I say to celebrate what they've done in the past and to look forward to the future with optimism then it's really it's so precarious that it will it will disappear far quicker than you could possibly imagine I'm tempted to point out you told a wee porky you said you would cheers up but just to give the last remarks to Jim you're very hard to follow I would say yeah I think your point just because it's there anyone of a political hue here just because something's there has been there in the past doesn't mean it will be in the future and I think governments at every level can play a really important role not providing the whole answer no one wants a subsidy and we're not going to get one but in bringing a whole sort of portfolio of solutions to the problem and everyone in the industry we've all got to have a go at this too and when this industry comes together and all it's it's a weird setup music especially live music you know when you've got artists to manager to agent to promoter to venue and then you know production companies in between who we didn't even mention as well I should have mentioned them yeah it is a weird setup but when it does all come together it's a very powerful thing and I think we need to remember that and if we all have a really good go at it there's a really good chance we can do something and if that's a slightly positive note I've seen it happen and we've seen models that are out there that work so we've just got to acknowledge them learn from them and do a bit of work bringing it all together and something that is currently there has been there for a long time could be there and thrive and be a big part of it but I think we need that recognition because you know and things like I don't want to mention brexit again but you know we are bigger than the fishing industry and look how much attention the fishing industry got relative to music in all of that you know and that was stupid you know I think that's going to be the coat of the night and on that note I'd like to thank Jim and Hamish and Beverly for their contribution and also for yourselves thank you very much for attending this evening I hope you've enjoyed it now I am duty bound to mention that there's a further music-related festival event on Friday the August 25th in conversation with music and artistic director the Los Angeles Phil Gustavo Duda Mel who is absolutely brilliant and I've seen him and I do hope you'll be able to join us for that and I hope you've enjoyed this event and thank you again to the panels thank you thank you