The Complete Toolkit for UK Music Venues: Everything GigXchange Gives You, FreeA rich listing, Smart Match, team and multi-site management, contracts, escrow payments and licensing tools. The whole live-music operation for a venue, in one place

Booking live music at a venue is a stack of small jobs. Finding acts, checking they are any good, agreeing a fee, getting something in writing, making sure the room is covered for the night, and paying out without a fuss. Most venues do it across a personal phone, a paper diary and a leap of faith. GigXchange puts the whole operation in one free account. This is everything a venue gets, tool by tool.

If you want the day-to-day workflow rather than the inventory, read how UK venues run live music on GigXchange. This guide is the full kit. Jump straight in from the For Venues page if you would rather just start.

Your Listing: A Profile Acts Can Plan From

Your venue listing is the first thing an act sees, and it decides whether they bother messaging you. You get a rich public profile with your regular nights and house rules, a full address with your own map, and a Getting Here & Access card covering the practical things: transport, parking, load-in, step-free access and curfew.

On top of that sits a full technical rider: PA and mixing desk, stage size, monitors, mics, backline, power and house sound limits. An act can see exactly what your room provides before they ever send a message, which kills the three-email back-and-forth about whether there is a backline or somewhere to park the van. There are also 9 link types so your socials and ticketing sit on the page. It is all server-rendered, so it shows up in Google and reads cleanly for AI assistants, and it is listed in the Grassroots Venue Directory alongside 2,490+ rooms across 90+ UK cities.

Run It as a Team, Across Several Sites

A venue is rarely one person. So you can invite your whole staff (managers, bookers, the bar lead who handles Friday nights) to run the live-music diary together under one venue account. The booker who is on shift can reply to an act without everyone sharing a single login, and nothing falls through the gap when someone is off.

If you operate more than one room or site, you can manage them all from the same account and switch between them, rather than juggling separate logins per venue. For a small chain or a multi-room operator, that is the difference between one tidy diary and five messy ones. You will find it under Team & Site Management once you are set up.

Finding and Vetting Acts: Three Ways In

The point of all this is filling the diary with acts that fit your room. GigXchange gives you three routes:

1. Smart Match: tell it what your room needs and it surfaces a shortlist of acts that fit, then you invite the ones you picked in one step.
2. Post a gig: advertise a slot and take applications from acts who actually want it, instead of cold-calling.
3. Browse profiles: search member profiles with filters by genre, location and act type, and reach out directly.

However you find an act, you can vet them before you reply. A Verified badge tells you the act is a real, active member, and reviews from other venues tell you what they are like to work with. That is a world away from booking a stranger off a phone number. The finding and hiring local bands guide goes deeper.

Contracts and Payments, Handled

Once you agree a gig, the contract and the money run through one flow. You can generate and sign a booking contract in-app, with cancellation tiers and deposit terms built in, so both sides know where they stand if a date moves. Then the fee is held securely in escrow and released to the act after they perform.

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That protects you as much as the act: you are not paying out before the gig happens, and there is no awkward cash-in-an-envelope moment at the end of the night. A Payments view tracks what is held and what has been released, with the wording adapting to how a venue pays rather than how an act gets paid. For the legal essentials, read what to include in a UK gig contract and how to handle cancellations and no-shows.

Licensing and Compliance Tools

Putting live music on comes with paperwork, and getting it wrong is expensive. So venues get a licensing checker and a compliance checklist built in, to confirm you are covered before a band plays: a premises licence for the event itself, and a music licence covering the public performance of live and recorded music. They sit with the other tools on the Free Tools hub.

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These tools point you at what you need; your local authority and the licensing bodies confirm the specifics for your premises. For the full rundown, read the UK live music licence guide for pubs and venues.

Get Found, Promote and Stay Covered

The toolkit also helps the room stay busy. Your listing in the re-verified venue directory and, if you run one, the Open Mic Finder bring local musicians to you: the Finder alone tracks 1,100+ weekly nights across 70+ UK cities. A Live Music Map and member profiles help acts and audiences picture the scene around your town.

When a booking falls through at short notice, GX Gig Rescue fills the gap — an urgent invite broadcast to available acts near you — rather than leaving you with a dark stage. And the GX Index keeps you paying fair, market-rate fees, so you attract good acts without overpaying. For the promotion side, the events poster turns your upcoming programme into a designed poster in one click, and how to promote a live music night at your venue covers the rest.

Your what's-on, four ways — each built from your programme and ready to print or post:

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What It Costs

Joining is free, every tool is free, and posting a gig is free. There is no monthly subscription. The only money GigXchange makes from a venue is the optional 5% protected-payment fee, charged only when a booking is settled through the platform (settle privately and there is no charge), against the roughly 20% an agency adds to a fee. On a £400 booking, that is the difference between at most £20 and handing an extra £80 to a middleman who never set foot in your room.

If you run live music at a UK venue, listing it takes a few minutes. See how booking works, then create a venue account and start with your listing and Smart Match. For the full operating picture, the companion guide is how UK venues run live music on GigXchange.

Annual refresh commitment

This guide was published on 28 June 2026 and is refreshed every June. The venue toolkit grows as we ship new tools, so annual verification matters. We re-verify every reference, recommendation, and data point once a year. Next scheduled refresh: June 2027. If any claim is outdated before then, email support@gigxchange.app and we will update it within 24 hours.