Music Venues Alliance Membership Update

All existing members of the Music Venues Alliance are being written to because the long awaited MVA membership platform is finally here, and we need you to back it.

For 8 years Music Venue Trust has tried to deliver a huge range of services, networking, events, and opportunities completely free to all members of the Music Venues Alliance. In the early days, a small number of venues elected to invest some money to help establish the charity and to create the first, early version of the MVA, with less than fifty members and staffed by just one full time employee. The network has now grown to nearly 1000 members, representing a huge range of venues in every corner of the country, and is one of the most powerful voices in the live music industry. Acting collectively, with the power of MVA members behind us, MVT has successfully fought for changes to the law, planning protections, case by case defences of threatened venue closures, reductions in taxation, beneficial trading terms and so much more for grassroots music venues. During Covid, the existence of the MVA, and its representative body Music Venue Trust, led to over £140 million of money being brought into the sector through grants, donations, rate cuts and taxation changes. Music Venues Alliance is a powerful, important, recognised network that gets things done. For all of us.

At Venues Day 2021, MVT announced that after eight years, we would finally have to ask you to become paid members of the MVA. The reason for this is simple. He who pays the piper calls the tune. We have realised that we cannot continue to try and fund MVA through brand partners, sponsorships, partnerships or even grants without beginning to water down what it is the network needs and wants and starting to have to prioritise what partners and funders want. If we want the MVA to continue to do everything it can for Grassroots Music Venues, we need Grassroots Music Venues themselves to own the work it does. And that means paying for it.

I don’t want a single venue to leave the MVA because it cannot afford membership. I want to keep every venue in the network and to keep us together as a collective force that the industry and the government has to reckon with. To that end, the paid membership scheme is being launched at an incredibly affordable entry price. And if, for any reason, any venue cannot find that membership fee we are also making available a special bursary scheme. We stood together during the Covid crisis and supported each other, and MVT is taking the same approach to creating a sustainable and resilient membership organisation for the future. We know some of you will struggle to raise a membership fee, but we are also aware that others will be able to afford much more than is being asked. To address this position, we have created multiple levels of membership, enabling those of you most able to support the network to make additional contributions that specifically enable more bursaries and cheaper membership fees for others. You can choose how to be a member, and you can talk to us about how to continue to be a member whatever your circumstances

We believe the MVA has a lot more to achieve. We want to tackle rising costs, ownership, licensing, levies, taxation, and so much more on your behalf across the next few years. But to do that we need a properly funded organisation that is owned and directed by its members, and that means asking you, the members, to make a monthly contribution towards delivering that service for you.

Please join the Music Venues Alliance and let’s work together to create the best live music network in the world.