The State of The (Live) Nation

What do Live Music Fans think about the first month of the return of live music, how many shows have taken place, who is, and isn’t, going, and what are venues and audiences doing to create Covid safe spaces?

Music Venue Trust conducted a series of surveys and data collection exercises during the first month of the full capacity reopening of Grassroots Music Venues.

  • 1891 people who normally attended live music events prior to the Covid crisis took part in an audience survey assessing attitudes about the return of live music and asking what precautions people had taken, or would like to see taken, around their visits to live music events
  • 221 Grassroots Music Venues took part in a survey about the precautions they had taken around opening and the attendance at their events
  • 100 Grassroots Music Venues were selected as representative of the sector, with case rates and transmission rates in their locality mapped to explore if the full capacity reopening of Grassroots Music Venues had a discernible impact on local case rates

Here are the main survey results:

Audiences

  • 82.1% of live music fans have already attended, or shortly plan to attend, a grassroots live music event
  • 91.3% of attendees had chosen to take an additional personal precaution to support their safety; double vaccination, testing or immunity
  • 36.8% of attendees had taken more than one precaution
  • 76.3% of people attending live music events are double vaccinated, substantially higher than the double vaccination rate for the general population (61.3%)
  • 91.6% of live music fans will have been vaccinated by the end of September if they complete their vaccination programme, substantially higher than predicted for the general population (77.9%)
  • 8.9% of live music fans wanted to see mandatory certification of health status as a condition of entry to Grassroots Music Venues
  • However, only 2.1% of live music fans wanted to see certified double vaccination as the sole mandatory condition of entry
  • A mix of mandatory certification options, displaying vaccination, testing or immunity, was more strongly supported by live music fans

 

Venues

  • 86% of Grassroots Music Venues are currently open and trading with a live music offer, equating to 817 venues, delivering over 13,000 shows in the last four weeks, to a total capacity audience in excess of 2 million people
  • 67.5% of Grassroots Music Venues report that their advance ticket sales are down compared to their pre-COVID-19 advance ticket sales
  • 61.7% of Grassroots Music Venues report that their turn up on the night (advanced sales and walk up) is down compared to their pre-COVID-19 turn up on the night
  • 52.1% of Grassroots Music Venues report that their bar take is down compared to their pre-COVID-19 bar take

 

Covid Statistics

  • 19 July, 39,950 cases were reported
  • 16 August, 4 weeks later, the number of reported cases had declined to 28,438.
  • Rate per 100,000 population on 18 July was 495.2
  • Rate per 100,000 population on 12 August had declined to 294.7
  • Between 18 July and 16 August, daily national case rates declined by 28%
  • In the local areas around a representative sample of 100 Grassroots Music Venues, case rates declined by 39%