UK Music have shared a brand new report, Let the Music Play: Save Our Summer season 2021, outlining their suggestions for tips on how to restart the UK’s dwell music trade as soon as it’s protected to take action.
While the roll-out of coronavirus vaccinations has boosted hopes that live music will be able to return in the UK later this year, there stays great uncertainty over whether this summer’s festival season will be able to go ahead as planned as a result of ongoing pandemic.
As MPs on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee open their inquiry into ‘The future of UK music festivals’ today (January 5), UK Music – whose CEO Jamie Njoku-Goodwin is amongst these set to provide proof to the inquiry this morning – have revealed their Let The Music Play report, which they are saying “outlines a transparent technique to guard and help the multi-billion pound dwell music trade so it is able to restart when protected to take action later this 12 months”.
“The music trade has labored arduous to make occasion areas as protected as they’ll probably be,” UK Music stated in a press release accompanying the brand new report. “This contains launching testing pilots to have the ability to maintain mass occasions safely, working with authorities to develop steerage for tips on how to maintain occasions safely, and taking a look at new air flow and air purification techniques that might dramatically cut back the danger of transmission.
“However there isn’t any certainty about when the trade can be allowed to carry mass occasions as soon as once more.”
The report warns that the shortage of coronavirus cancellation insurance coverage is “the most important barrier to main occasions occurring in 2021”, and calls on the UK Authorities to implement an insurance coverage scheme because it has finished for the movie and TV sector.
It’s nonetheless unclear whether or not 2021 competition season will have the ability to go forward (Image: Getty)
Whereas UK Music welcomed the government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund, which helped help the dwell music trade throughout the pandemic final 12 months, the sector nonetheless “urgently wants to have the ability to plan for the post-pandemic interval and the height summer season season” this 12 months.
Among the many key requires motion within the organisation’s Let the Music Play report is “an indicative date for a full capability restart” for venues and festivals, a government-backed indemnity scheme and focused monetary help for the dwell music trade.
UK Music are additionally calling for an extension to the VAT price discount on tickets, a rollover of the paid 2020 Native Authority licence charges for festivals to 2021 and an extension to enterprise charges reduction.
The organisation have additionally warned that as much as 50% of the UK music competition trade’s workforce are vulnerable to being made redundant after a disastrous 2020 for the sector, whereas additional reiterating fears that up to 71% of musicians are either actively considering leaving the sector or are unsure if they will continue (according to a recent survey conducted by the Musicians’ Union) as a result of results of the pandemic on the music trade.
“Whereas this pandemic continues to be raging and continues to trigger devastation to lives and livelihoods at this time, there may be an endpoint in sight,” UK Music’s Jamie Njoku-Goodwin stated. “Authorities is rolling out the vaccine and is overtly speculating about returning to regular by the spring – however there’s a critical threat that even when this proves to be a actuality, lack of discover and out there insurance coverage choices will imply a lot of the 2021 summer season music season can’t go forward.”
Njoku-Goodwin added that the “clock is ticking, and any day quickly we might see main festivals and occasions begin pulling the plug for lack of certainty”.
“With the proper help the dwell music trade may be on the forefront of the post-pandemic restoration and play a key function in our nation’s financial and cultural revival – however there’ll have to be a concerted effort from trade and the Authorities collectively if we’re to let the music play and save our summer season.”
Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis stated over the weekend that he hopes the competition, which was cancelled in 2020, would have the ability to return this summer season providing that the “majority” of the UK’s population is vaccinated against coronavirus by June. In December, Emily Eavis stressed that Glastonbury 2021 has “not [been] cancelled yet”.
Speaking to NME back in September, Reading & Leeds boss Melvin Benn maintained that “everybody can be examined” for coronavirus at this 12 months’s deliberate twin festivals.
“We don’t want a vaccination as a result of we will work via the issue with a extremely good testing regime. We’ll have the ability to do that by subsequent 12 months [2021],” he stated.
“If there is a vaccine, there can be adequate for the outdated and the susceptible. Younger folks can resist it. The federal government know that now. In March and April, they didn’t know that. All people was shit-scared and that’s inevitable, however as we’ve realized extra, we all know the sturdy and wholesome are in a position to survive it.”
