Let Clubs Close: A Controversial Solution to the Live Venue Crisis
Overall concert attendance grew 20% last year, but smaller independent live music venues are closing at unprecedent rates. Music industry commentator’s Bob Lefsetz has the solution: “Let clubs close.”
Let clubs close
The UK lost 125 smaller music venues last year and the trend is continuing this year. Australia lost 1,300 or one-third of its small and mid-sized music venues since the COVID pandemic. Solid numbers aren’t available for the US, but observers tell Hypebot that the struggles are the same.
Most involved in live music blame the closures on increased competition from major artists and big corporations like Live Nation and AEG, along with rising rents, expenses, and labor costs.
Bob Lefsetz offers a different answer: “The bottom line is today’s generation doesn’t want to go to clubs to listen to the music of unsigned/developing acts.”
Traditionally, musicians needed small venues to practice their craft and build an audience. Not anymore, according to Lefsetz.
“The music business has completely flipped,” he writes. “Most acts gain their start online. Not to mention the fact that most of the name clubs in the U.S. were supported by the record companies, and after Napster came along they closed in droves.”
Increasingly artists build a fanbase online. “The chance of building it from your local club, bigger and bigger into stardom, have never been lower,” says Lefsetz.
Survival of Music’s Middle Class
Even if Lefsetz is right about small clubs now being less of a path to superstardom, his arguments miss their importance to music’s middle class and the rest of the music industry.
“It’s not about ‘starting in clubs’, it’s as much about having places to actually ‘go and show’ after starting ‘online,’ according to Gang Of Four drummer and educator Hugo Burnham. “It’s about keeping club-level venues going as feeders to the bigger, established venues; and – scratch my eyes out – to re-energize people going out for actual live, physical music experiences that is anything other than big acts in big venues.
“There’s a whole bigger music industry that may never get near a chart (whatever the f*ck that means today), or even get to play in arenas.” says Burham. “Deer Tick springs to mind, as a local N.E. example (so far!) Or old school farts (like us) who draw solidly but not constantly enough to fill 2,500+ venues.”
Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a Berklee College Of Music professor.
