The government’s first national music strategy in years contains what looks at first glance to be serious money, potentially useful reforms and several small victories for long-running industry campaigns. But voluntary levies, temporary relief and another procession of consultations cannot cure every structural problem facing British music.
The British music industry has rarely suffered from a shortage of plans, panels, taskforces or people in Westminster describing it as “world-leading”. What it has lacked rather more noticeably is a dependable mechanism for keeping grassroots venues open, artists on the road, music in schools and ticket touts out of fans’ pockets.
The government’s newly published Turn It Up: Our Plan for Music is its attempt to start joining those frayed wires together. It combines some limited new investment with ticketing legislation, licensing reform, education initiatives, export support and measures claimed to improve working conditions across an industry built largely on small businesses and freelance labour.
There is plenty here worth welcoming. The proposed crackdown on ticket touting has real regulatory teeth. Business-rates relief should provide immediate help to venues. Digital customs processing may remove some of the paper thickets surrounding European touring. Extra Temporary Event Notices could create more opportunities for local gigs, while the expanded Music Growth Package reaches beyond buildings to support artists, managers and promoters.
But the plan also relies heavily on temporary funding, voluntary industry action and promises of further consultation. It does not yet offer a convincing structural answer to the economics of streaming, the long-term fragility of grassroots venues or the speed with which generative AI is rewriting the rules around copyright and creative ownership.
That does not make Turn It Up insignificant. It makes it a starting point.
Talking to one hard-working and definitely grass-roots artist, Scott, from the festival-circuit and self-promoted tour band, The Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican, we got this very feeling from his perspective – there is as much the plan doesnt’t address as the things it does:
“PRS is another major issue for grassroots venues that isn’t addressed here, because the costs of that scheme don’t always stop at the venue. In many cases, they’re passed on to artists, promoters or people hiring the space.
“That means the same pressure simply moves further down the grassroots chain, where everyone is already operating on very tight margins. The whole situation feels unfair and unnecessarily opaque.
“Mark Davyd from Music Venue Trust has written extensively about this and has been trying to draw attention to the way the system affects venues and performers. Any serious plan for grassroots music should look at PRS charges alongside business rates, VAT and the wider cost of putting on live shows.
“Any relief for grassroots venues, including VAT relief, is welcome, but there also needs to be some thought about how that affects VAT-registered artists and agencies. The whole system is interconnected, and changing one part of it can have consequences elsewhere.
“I lived in Michael Dugher’s former Barnsley constituency when he was an MP, so I know something of his genuine passion for music. He was involved in the early stages of the now sadly defunct Live in Barnsley festival and helped bring people such as Fergal Sharkey on board as a patron of an urban music festival in a small market town.
“He championed and celebrated music at a local level then, so there is good reason to hope that experience will be at the heart of what he now wants to achieve as our UK Music Champion.
“At the same time, one person could spend most of the year simply trying to understand why the industry is so dysfunctional, without ever having the time or authority to deliver substantial and lasting change. The challenge will be ensuring that the role has enough influence and support to turn Dugher’s understanding of the sector into practical results.
“As a former primary school teacher, I saw first-hand the diminishing returns caused by years of underfunding of music and the arts under successive Conservative governments. Non-specialist teachers were increasingly expected to provide music education without the expertise, resources or outside support they needed.
“Secondary-school music is also monumentally underfunded, and the focus remains overwhelmingly on core subjects. Labour has inherited a great deal of bad practice to undo, and it may take another term in office before we even begin to see meaningful results.
“Announcing new programmes is a welcome start, but rebuilding specialist knowledge, restoring provision and giving music a secure place within schools will require sustained investment over many years. Ultimately, anything intended to create lasting change needs genuine cross-party involvement and MPs who understand and value music. Music education cannot be rebuilt if its future is repeatedly rewritten or underfunded whenever the government changes.
“The post-Brexit touring restrictions have not affected us directly as a band because we haven’t toured outside the UK, but musicians should have the same freedoms they had before. Artists should be able to tour Europe without carnets, restrictive time limits and layers of unnecessary administration.”
Meanwhile, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said that “pop is getting posher”, arguing that talent remains widespread while access to instruments, teaching, rehearsal space and professional opportunity is increasingly shaped by family income and geography. The plan claims to back that diagnosis with a £45 million Music Growth Package, £12.5 million for music facilities in libraries, £10 million for creative mentoring and a wider £132.5 million programme of enrichment for disadvantaged young people.
It also appoints former UK Music chief executive and Labour MP Michael Dugher as the government’s first Music Champion. His task is to act as a conduit between ministers and the industry, monitor how the plan works on the ground and identify what should happen next. It is a one-year, unremunerated appointment, potentially renewable.
Dugher knows both Westminster and the music business, but one unpaid advocate, however well connected, cannot substitute for ministerial accountability. His usefulness will depend on whether he is given access, influence and the freedom to tell government when its own policies are failing.
And there are already other people out there saying the measures don’t go far enough.
Spike, from Brighton’s Garageland Promotions, said: “The Government’s new music plan is a welcome step, particularly the additional funding for grassroots music, support for venues and investment in new artists. Anything that helps keep small venues alive and encourages live music should be applauded.
“However, one major issue appears to have been largely overlooked: international touring.
“As a grassroots promoter, I’ve seen first-hand how much more difficult it has become to bring overseas bands to the UK and for UK bands to tour abroad.
“For many independent UK bands, Europe is no longer the natural touring circuit it once was. Since Brexit, musicians face extra paperwork, carnet costs for equipment, cabotage restrictions, merchandise VAT issues and uncertainty over work permits that vary from country to country. These costs can make a short DIY European tour financially unviable, particularly for emerging bands travelling in a van.
“The same applies in reverse. European bands wanting to play in the UK face visas, border rules, customs requirements and extra costs before they’ve even played a note. Grassroots promoters and DIY venues simply don’t have the budgets to absorb these expenses, meaning fewer international artists make it onto our stages.
“The impact goes beyond the touring artists themselves. Grassroots venues and promoters rely on a healthy exchange of bands from different countries. Fewer overseas acts mean fewer opportunities for UK bands to share bills with international artists, build relationships, gain new audiences and develop the networks that are so important to a sustainable music career. Audiences also miss out on discovering exciting new music from overseas, making the grassroots scene less vibrant and less diverse.
“The UK has always benefited from a thriving exchange of artists. Local audiences discover exciting new bands from Europe, the US, Australia and beyond, while British bands build audiences overseas through affordable DIY touring. That exchange has been significantly damaged over the last few years.
“If the Government genuinely wants to strengthen the UK’s grassroots music ecosystem, it should make international touring a priority. That means working towards simpler reciprocal touring arrangements with Europe, reducing administrative barriers, making it easier to transport equipment and merchandise across borders, and ensuring independent artists have the same opportunities to build international careers as previous generations enjoyed.
“Investment at home is important, but so is reconnecting UK musicians with audiences abroad and making Britain an easier place for international artists to visit. Grassroots music has always thrived through collaboration and cultural exchange. Removing barriers to touring would arguably do as much for the future of independent music as any grant programme.”
THE SHARPEST TOOL IN THE BOX
The proposed Ticket Tout Ban Bill may be the plan’s most consequential regulatory measure.
The government intends to prevent tickets being resold above the original price paid, cap resale-platform service fees and make platforms responsible for complying with the rules. The draft legislation will undergo parliamentary scrutiny before being introduced.
This is a major victory for the FanFair Alliance and the artists, managers and consumer groups that have campaigned against industrial-scale ticket touting for the best part of a decade.
A face-value cap attacks the secondary market at its most vulnerable point: the profit motive. It should make it far harder for professional resellers to hoover up tickets and place them back on sale moments later at several times their original value.
The benefit may extend beyond the individual purchase. Fans not stripped of an extra £100 by a resale platform have more money available for merchandise, independent record shops, another gig or the venue bar. Instead of being extracted by a trader who contributed nothing to the show, that spending has a better chance of remaining inside the music economy.
The legislation will not settle every ticketing argument. Dynamic pricing, opaque fees, restricted pre-sales and the concentration of ticketing, promotion and venue ownership among a small number of large companies will remain. A fan protected from a tout may still encounter an official ticket price that mutates while they are halfway through the queue.
Even so, this is a genuine attempt to correct a market failure, rather than another request for the industry to behave itself voluntarily.
VENUES: BREATHING SPACE, NOT A CURE
For grassroots venues, the confirmed business-rates package offers more immediate relief.
Live music venues will receive a 15 per cent cut to their new bills for the 2026/27 financial year, followed by a two-year real-terms freeze through to 2028/29. At a time of rising wages, energy costs, insurance, rent and maintenance bills, reducing a fixed overhead could keep some venues on the functioning side of the trapdoor.
The scale of the underlying problem is no longer speculative. Music Venue Trust recorded the loss of 125 grassroots spaces in 2023, representing 16 per cent of the circuit it monitored. The rate of closures has since slowed, but its latest evidence says another 30 venues closed permanently during 2025, more than half of the remaining venues returned no profit and average margins stood at just 2.5 per cent.
A sold-out 200-capacity show can still generate almost nothing once the artist, promoter, sound engineer, security, staffing and operating costs have been paid. A broken refrigerator or leaking roof can swallow the proceeds of several successful nights.
Rates relief therefore buys time. It is valuable, but it is not permanent structural reform.
Music Venue Trust, the Association of Independent Festivals and Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee have repeatedly called for targeted VAT relief on grassroots tickets. The committee recommended both a ticket levy and a temporary VAT cut in 2024, arguing that the venue crisis could not be solved by occasional grants alone.
Business-rates relief assists the premises. VAT reform would alter the economics of almost every qualifying ticket sold. Its absence remains one of the plan’s most conspicuous empty spaces.
THE £1 LEVY AND THE LIMITS OF VOLUNTEERING
The plan continues to back a voluntary £1 contribution from tickets sold for arena and stadium shows above 5,000 capacity, with the money flowing through the LIVE Trust to grassroots venues, artists, promoters and small festivals.
The LIVE Trust has already distributed £1.5 million, and several major artists, promoters and venues have adopted the scheme. That is tangible progress.
The weakness is contained in one word: voluntary.
Music Venue Trust told Parliament in 2025 that only 8.1 per cent of eligible tickets then carried a contribution. The government now says it may consider legislation if participation remains inadequate, but it has not yet defined the point at which patience runs out.
A voluntary levy works when everyone volunteers. When participation is patchy, supportive artists and responsible promoters help fund the talent pipeline while competitors receive the same benefits without contributing.
The government needs to establish a threshold, a review date and a statutory trigger. Otherwise, “we may legislate” risks becoming the policy equivalent of a venue manager saying they will definitely fix the backstage toilet after the next busy period.
AGENT OF CHANGE: PROTECTION BEFORE THE COMPLAINTS BEGIN
The plan also promises stronger application of the Agent of Change principle, under which developers building homes near established music venues should carry the cost of preventing future noise conflicts.
Music Venue Trust has campaigned for this protection for more than a decade, following repeated cases in which housing was approved beside a longstanding venue and complaints from new residents subsequently threatened its operations.
The principle is now recognised in planning policy, but its effectiveness has varied sharply between local authorities. The government intends to update guidance, write to planning departments and encourage councils to reflect Agent of Change in their licensing policies.
That is welcome, but guidance is only useful when enforced before the conflict begins.
Developers need to install meaningful sound insulation. Planning and licensing teams need to speak to one another. Buyers and tenants need clear information about nearby venues before moving in. Otherwise, the cost and risk drift back towards the music space that was there first.
Agent of Change is a sensible principle. Its real test is whether councils apply it while a development is still on the drawing board, rather than discovering it after another venue is already fighting for survival.
FUNDING THE PEOPLE, NOT JUST THE ROOMS
The £45 million Music Growth Package is the plan’s financial centrepiece. It is expected to support more than 2,000 projects and at least 40,000 artists and music professionals over three years, including venues, festivals, recording studios, rehearsal spaces, promoters, labels, publishers, managers and mid-career artists.
That breadth matters because the grassroots crisis no longer fits neatly into a “save the venues” box.
A venue may remain open but struggle to find bands able to afford touring. An artist can sell a respectable number of tickets and still lose money after transport, accommodation and crew costs. A promoter may identify an exciting new act and then decide the figures are too dangerous to move the show from spreadsheet to stage.
Funding managers, promoters and artists recognises that infrastructure includes people as well as rooms and sound systems.
The danger is that £45 million divided among thousands of recipients produces many excellent interventions without changing the underlying model. Grants can support a tour or help a promoter take a risk. They cannot permanently make loss-making shows viable or restore local cultural budgets hollowed out over many years.
There is also a hidden cost in competitive funding. Small organisations and self-employed artists may spend days preparing applications, budgets and impact statements for grants they ultimately do not receive.
One experienced touring musician who wanted to stay in the shadows on this point also raised a more uncomfortable question about proposals to support financially struggling tours.
While accepting that rising transport, accommodation and production costs can make even well-attended tours difficult to sustain, they argued that public or industry funding must distinguish between artists facing genuine barriers and those who have simply not bothered to put enough hard work into selling their shows.
Tour support, in their view, should reward credible planning, audience development and demonstrable effort rather than becoming an automatic safety net for poorly promoted runs. Without careful assessment, there’s a risk that funding could preserve weak touring models instead of helping committed artists whose shows are viable but whose margins have been crushed by costs.
The package is meaningful investment. It is not yet a new economic settlement.
THE FREELANCE WORKFORCE AND WHO PROTECTS IT
That distinction becomes especially important when looking at the people who actually keep the industry moving.
The government estimates that 65 per cent of workers across music and the wider performing arts are freelance or self-employed. They include musicians, producers, technicians, photographers, tour managers, stage crew, designers and countless others whose work is essential but whose access to sick pay, employment protection and reliable payment can be vanishingly slight.
The plan promises a new Creative Freelance Champion to represent those workers in policy discussions. It also supports the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority, or CIISA, which has been added to the Prescribed Person Order. This should allow people to raise whistleblowing concerns, including allegations of sexual harassment, with greater protection against dismissal or other detriment.
The government is also consulting on extending its ban on non-disclosure agreements in harassment and discrimination cases to a wider range of working arrangements, including freelancers.
These are important measures in an industry where employment relationships can be informal, power imbalances extreme and careers vulnerable to quiet blacklisting.
But a champion is an advocate, not an enforcement body. The plan gives the role a voice but does not specify powers to tackle late payment, insecure contracts or gaps in employment law.
CIISA is similarly valuable but limited. The Independent Society of Musicians has previously warned that it is not a statutory regulator and cannot by itself give freelance workers the same discrimination protections as employees.
The plan begins to acknowledge the people behind the stage curtain. The next step is ensuring they possess enforceable rights rather than merely better places to report their absence.
MUSIC EDUCATION: REBUILDING A DAMAGED PIPELINE
The plan is stronger on school music than some early summaries suggest.
It promises a reformed National Curriculum from September 2028, removal of the English Baccalaureate accountability measure, a £13 million National Centre for Arts and Music Education, continued annual support for Music Hubs and £25 million for more than 130,000 instruments and pieces of music technology.
Those are significant commitments. They are also repairing a system that has been running down for years.
In 2024, 42 per cent of schools entered no pupils for music GCSE. The music-teacher vacancy rate had increased sixfold between 2010/11 and 2022/23, while recruitment fell by 56 per cent. GCSE music entries rose modestly in 2025, but remained nearly 11 per cent below their 2017 level.
That gives hard edges to Nandy’s claim that “pop is getting posher”. Families able to buy instruments, private lessons and transport can construct their own route through the thinning provision. Everyone else depends on what their school or local Music Hub can still provide.
The library programme is imaginative. Free recording booths, instruments and studio spaces could turn familiar public buildings into small community music laboratories. But equipment alone does not create access. A mixing desk in a locked room is merely an unusually complicated table.
Libraries will need trained staff, maintenance budgets, safeguarding systems and dependable opening hours. Likewise, curriculum reform will require enough specialist teachers to deliver it.
The plan provides promising architecture, but the workforce shortage remains the cracked foundation beneath it.
LESS PAPERWORK, MORE GIGS
The plan’s smaller regulatory changes may deliver some of its quickest practical results.
Temporary Event Notices will increase from 15 to 20 a year, with the maximum number of event days rising from 21 to 26. These notices allow small venues and alternative spaces to host limited-capacity events without undertaking a full premises-licence variation.
Five extra notices will not rescue live music, but they may allow a pub to establish a regular gig night, a community hall to test a new event or an emerging promoter to build an audience.
Longer festival licences could be equally useful. The government wants established events normally to receive at least five-year licences and new events at least three, reducing the uncertainty that can undermine negotiations with landowners, suppliers and investors.
The catch is that much of this will be delivered through non-statutory guidance. Its effect will depend on overstretched local authorities applying it consistently.
Digital ATA carnets should also reduce the administrative burden on artists taking instruments and equipment into Europe. The government expects around 70 per cent of UK-issued carnets eventually to be processed digitally.
That is a practical improvement, but it does not remove work permits, cabotage rules, merchandise restrictions or the wider costs created by Brexit.
The paperwork may become lighter. The road itself remains obstructed.
STREAMING AND AI: THE STRUCTURAL TEST
The plan is far less decisive when it reaches the global digital economy.
On streaming, the government backs principles developed by the BPI and record labels, with the three major labels estimating that their programmes will deliver tens of millions of pounds to creators by 2030. Implementation will be monitored, with progress reviewed in 2027.
That is not nothing. Writing off unrecouped balances and improving payments to some legacy artists can make a real difference.
But label-led principles leave labels marking much of their own homework. The Musicians’ Union continues to call for minimum digital royalty rates, contract-adjustment rights and equitable remuneration for session and non-featured performers. Its research suggests that 92 per cent of musicians receive less than five per cent of their income from streaming.
Public grants should help artists develop. They should not become compensation for a recorded-music economy that fails to pay many of them properly.
Artificial intelligence presents an even faster-moving problem. The plan acknowledges that 66 per cent of creators see AI as a direct threat to their careers and 90 per cent are concerned about protection for their voice, image and copyrighted work.
It proposes a consultation on digital replicas, an AI-labelling taskforce and further work on licensing and transparency. These are necessary steps, but technology companies are not waiting for the consultation minutes.
Musicians need enforceable rules around consent, training data, attribution and payment. Without them, creators may be forced to discover and challenge the use of their work after a model has already been trained and commercialised.
The plan is keen to help musicians adopt AI. It now needs to be equally determined about preventing AI companies from adopting musicians without permission.
A SERIOUS OPENING MOVEMENT
The strongest feature of Turn It Up is that it treats music as an ecosystem rather than a parade of famous performers.
It connects schools, libraries, venues, studios, promoters, freelancers, export programmes, ticket buyers and digital rights. It also shows that sustained campaigning by Music Venue Trust, FanFair Alliance, the Musicians’ Union, the Featured Artists Coalition, the Association of Independent Festivals and others has shifted ideas once dismissed as niche concerns towards the centre of government policy.
There are meaningful tactical wins here.
Ticketing legislation could dismantle a parasitic resale model. Rates relief may keep venues alive. The Music Growth Package should support valuable tours and projects. Longer licences and extra Temporary Event Notices could create more local activity. Stronger application of Agent of Change may protect venues from badly planned development. CIISA may give workers a safer route to report abuse. Education reforms could begin repairing the talent pipeline.
But the structural gaps remain.
The arena levy is still voluntary. VAT relief is absent. Streaming reform is label-led. Freelance protections remain incomplete. AI policy is moving more slowly than AI itself. European touring is easier only at the edges.
None of those shortcomings is a reason to dismiss the plan. They are reasons to keep pressure on it.
The danger is that publication becomes confused with delivery, and that Michael Dugher is left touring the country collecting concerns while the departments capable of resolving them admire the completeness of their consultation process.
The real test will happen far from the launch party: in the venue deciding whether it can survive another winter, the promoter considering whether to risk a new artist, the session musician opening a streaming statement and the teenager trying to find somewhere affordable to learn, rehearse or record.
A national music strategy cannot be judged by the volume of its announcement.
It will be judged by whether there are eventually more places to play, more people able to earn a living and fewer talented young artists locked outside the door.
Turn It Up gives British music a credible opening movement. Now the government must prove it is prepared to fund, regulate and enforce the rest of the score.
