In Conversation with MARK DAVYD, CEO & FOUNDER of the UK’s MUSIC VENUE TRUST about ‘that’ SAM RYDER TIKTOK AD, live music venues & how to make it as a musician in 2023.
Today Mark Davyd, CEO & Founder of the UK’s MUSIC VENUE TRUST — joins me on our virtual orange-red couch to chat to us about the MUSIC BUSINESS, the MUSIC VENUE TRUST, social media, TikTok in particular, and why a whole lot needs to change for musicians in 2023.
RADIOSPARX: Thanks for joining me, Mark. It’s great to have you here. You recently wrote an impassioned piece about TikTok’s SAM RYDER advert in Eurovision’s Liverpool with the tagline TIKTOK GETS STARS STARTED which enraged you. We’ll talk about that in a minute, but first tell me about MUSIC VENUE TRUST, about its ethos and what is it trying to do for live music in 2023?
MARK DAVYD: Music Venue Trust was formed in 2014 by a group of people working in the grassroots music venue sector who had become very concerned about the number of venues closing down. In the last nine years its work has encompassed simple things, like offering advice to venues about noise complaints and how to work with their landlords on any tenancy issues, through to highly complex adjustments to national planning laws and seeking to change the investment structure that supports the grassroots circuit. Overall, we are just trying to make a future for the UK’s grassroots music venues which is economically viable and sustainable. WE don’t accept that local music venues are being lost to communities while the global live music industry is returning extraordinary profits.
RADIOSPARX: Fantastic. Live music is where it’s at and how many wonderful moments are had at a gig where you’re seeing your favourite band perform. How has the Music Industry changed, in your opinion, over the last 10 years?
MARK DAVYD: It has become more centralised, with profit concentrating increasingly in the hands of a limited number of organisations and highly wealthy individuals. This is an aspirational industry in which the pursuit of fame and fortune is clearly a driver in artists’ decision making.
The question we should be asking is ‘when does that pursuit of that goal exceed the ability for the ecosystem to support it’. You could argue that this challenge is the same one facing much of modern democratic society; when does the ‘trickle down’ approach fail to trickle down enough that people can afford to get started in our industry? Artists can launch and develop their careers. We’ve seen arena and stadium ticket prices reach dizzying heights and multinational tours turn from tens of millions of pounds or dollars in returns, to hundreds of millions. At the same time, one small venue is closing every week cutting off whole communities from access to live music. This needs fixes and it can be fixed.
RADIOSPARX: So interesting Mark. Agreed. Live music is the lifeblood of the industry. Please tell me about MVT’s landmark achievements.
MARK DAVYD: Writing the first ever report on grassroots music venues for the Mayor of London; changing the UK’s National Planning Policy Framework; raising over £100 million of support for venues during the Covid Pandemic from public artists and the Government; raising over £2million for our project to change the ownership of grassroots music venues; it’s quite a long list of major achievements and a real testament to my team that the breadth of our work often makes major changes that people don’t even know about.
RADIOSPARX: Fascinating! So, MUSIC VENUE TRUST is sort of like the GUARDIAN ANGEL of live music venues. We need you guys. So, thanks. How hard, would you say, is it to make it in the MUSIC INDUSTRY today in 2023, if you’re just starting out? And what gives you the best chance of success?
MARK DAVYD: It’s properly easier than ever to get a short-term career built around one song, or even a soundbite. Running concurrently with this opportunity, it’s probably harder than it’s ever been to get a long-term and sustainable career. Depending on what you want to achieve, a shooting star or a slow burning nebula, indicates where your efforts should lie. Grassroots music venues are mainly interested in artists that are trying to create a body of work across a long period of effort that stands the test of time. The way to do that is to play live as often as possible, constantly building an audience and always working on developing your fanbase, your skills and experience. At the same time, I don’t feel there’s anything particularly wrong in wanting to achieve ‘Tik Tok’ fame, a massively successful one off that often shines brightly and then disappears.
RADIOSPARX: Too true and a great insight and advice. How supportive are venues — big and small — of emerging artists, or is it all about audience sizes and how much booze they can sell at their venue?
MARK DAVYD: Grassroots Music Venues spent £212 million on live music in 2022 and raised only £133 million in ticket sales. That’s a £79 million hole in the funding for live music that every grassroots music venue operator has to try and balance every day by selling food and beverages. If it sometimes seems to artists that a venue might be overly focused on trying to sell beer, it’s worth keeping in mind that at this point in the economic ecosystem a gig without bar sales is only achievable if it has public funding support.
RADIOSPARX: Such interesting insight! Thank you. It’s really food-for-thought for us gig goers. We’ll remember your words. Do you have MVT partners in the US and the EU? Australia?
MARK DAVYD: During Covid a great new organisation emerged in the US called NIVA (National Independent Venue Alliance). While it’s one of the newer associations on the grassroots scene, it’s also proven itself to be one of the most effective. Associations like MVT exist all the way across Europe and are united together by an organisation called Live DMA. Australia actually has a Live Music Officer appointed by the government!
RADIOSPARX: Amazing!! It’s wonderful to know this is a GLOBAL movement that we all really need to get behind. Do venues pay their acts enough? I’ve heard they don’t and sometimes they don’t even pay. How do we change this?
MARK DAVYD: Live music venues supported musicians with £79 million in 2022 that they didn’t make from the proceeds paid by the audience to watch them play. It’s a perfectly reasonable point for artists to argue that the resulting fees to them that this produces isn’t enough, but it is the limit of what we can expect grassroots music venue operators to do on their own. The sector is operating on a 0.2% profit margin, and the average venue operator is paying themselves less than minimum wage per hour for their work. There’s no more money left in this part of the ecosystem, and I’d strongly encourage artists that want to see better fees to join with Music Venue Trust — or similar organisations in your country of residence — in our (and their) various campaigns to identify the additional money that would be required from outside of the sector to make that possible. Two big campaigns are leading the charge on this issue; the need for every arena and stadium show to make a contribution back into the grassroots through a direct financial contribution on every ticket, and the need for much greater public funding support for the sector. Don’t shout at a venue owner who is already handing over the profit from the bar, shout at the industry that is making incredible profits while we continue to struggle to pay musicians enough money to put petrol in the van.
RADIOSPARX: Ouch. That’s powerful! But so, so important to know. Thanks so much for telling us this. Tell me about the passion behind your SUBSTACK article on Sam Ryder and that TikTok ad which was part of their ‘WHERE STARS GET STARTED’ campaign. Was it only the ‘lie’ they told about Sam Ryder that fired up your passion? Have you spoken to TikTok about the ad?
MARK DAVYD: Liverpool’s ‘United by Music’ tagline for EUROVISION was genuinely a really great example of how to take a major event and turn it into a story about the whole of a city’s music offering. The billboards featuring Sam Ryder, claiming that he was ‘created by TikTok’ just rubbed hard against that message and felt completely misjudged and out of place. They contacted me after the article was published on my SUBSTACK to say they didn’t mean that and they really do care about creating spaces and opportunities for future artists. Well, see above. For the price of the billboards placed by TikTok in Liverpool I could stop ten or more venues from closing down. We could pay hundreds of artists the money they actually need to make the gig financially worthwhile. We need to be more open to this and companies need to listen to us. If TikTok have the money to pay for huge billboards making extravagant claims about Sam Ryder in Liverpool, they have the money to support grassroots music venues and stop them closing down. It’s simply a question of priorities.
RADIOSPARX: We one hundred percent agree!! Great to hear you talk about this hugely important issue. How can these tech platforms be ‘re-calibrated’ as you say to speak truthfully about musicians and their journeys to stardom?
MARK DAVYD: They can start spending the funding they have intelligently in a way that supports the ecosystem rather than undermines it. We’ve genuinely given them lots of options to do this. The challenge is that a lot of these tech platforms aren’t actually in the business of music at all; they are data management organisations harvesting as much information as they can. Music fans need to be more aware of this and ask themselves more often how the money they give these companies is being spent.
RADIOSPARX: Thanks. That’s a massive topic and we could talk to you for hours about this, but for now, talk to me about journey to CEO of MVT?
MARK DAVYD: I’ve written a book! You can follow my story every Sunday on my SUBSTACK. I’m publishing it chapter by chapter. People ask me about my ‘career’. As the person who’s experienced it, it feels more like a series of unlikely and incredible events accidentally thrown together in a blender and I’ve emerged at the end of it.
RADIOSPARX: Lovely. We get you!! One last question Mark before we leave you. Is social media an asset or a negative for music artists?
MARK DAVYD: Yes, it is, or it can be. I know that doesn’t sound like it’s the answer to that question but it honestly is. The demands social media places on artists are really too onerous and a total distraction, but many artists are getting noticed because of their activity on it. So, it’s swings and roundabouts.
Thanks Mark, it’s been wonderful talking to you.
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