Independent Music Industry StatisticsThe sourced evidence base behind the investment thesis

By Naumaan Zahid Published 2 August 2026 4 min read

MarketInvestor Hub

Executive summary

The sourced numbers: UK music contributes £8bn GVA (This Is Music 2025), supporting 220,000 full-time-equivalent jobs, with live music drawing £6.68bn in consumer spend (LIVE, 2024); the Music Venue Trust counts 801 grassroots venues, 53% of which made no profit in 2025; and GigXchange's own GX Index — thousands of observed fee data points — is the only published dataset on what UK grassroots gigs actually pay.

The full sourced compendium lives at UK market statistics; primary GigXchange data at the GX Index.

This page is the evidence base for the investment thesis: the external figures the argument rests on, each with the body, measure and year that published it. It is deliberately not a statistics compendium — the full maintained set of UK live-music figures lives on UK market statistics, the canonical page for those numbers, and GigXchange's own primary data is published at the GX Index.

Industry-level figures (external sources)

£8bn — total UK music industry GVA in 2024, up from £7.6bn in 2023 (UK Music, This Is Music 2025).
220,000 — full-time-equivalent jobs supported by UK music in 2024 (UK Music).
£6.68bn — consumer spend on live music in 2024. This is an economic-impact measure published separately by LIVE, on a different basis from GVA, and is not a component of the figure above.
801 — grassroots music venues remaining in the UK. 30 closed permanently over the year, 53% made no profit at all, and average margins ran at 2.5% (MVT Annual Report 2025).
175 — UK towns and cities, home to an estimated 25 million people, that no longer receive regular touring shows by professional artists (MVT, 2025).
59% — grassroots venues (475 rooms) with no major promoter activity at all (MVT, 2025).

Market-structure figures (GigXchange primary data)

GigXchange publishes the market's missing microdata, all free to cite with a link: thousands of UK venues that book live music mapped across hundreds of UK towns and cities in the venue directory; over a thousand verified open mic nights in the open mic directory; and the GX Index — thousands of weighted fee data points refreshed monthly with a public methodology, the only published dataset of observed market rates for UK grassroots gigs. Live counts are on the Investor Hub landing page.

What the numbers say together

A large industry (£8bn GVA) rests on a grassroots layer that is measurably fragile — 53% of venues made no profit in 2025, on average margins of 2.5% — and informationally starved (no published pay data before the GX Index, no national venue picture before the directory). That combination — scale above, fragility and opacity below — is the market-structure argument developed in The UK live music market and Why now.

Citation policy

Every GigXchange figure is free to cite with a link to gigxchange.app; several datasets are additionally released under CC BY 4.0 with permanent identifiers. External figures above should be cited to their original publishers — UK Music and the Music Venue Trust — via the links given.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is the UK music industry?

UK Music's This Is Music 2025 report puts total UK music industry GVA at £8bn for 2024, supporting 220,000 full-time-equivalent jobs. Live music is measured separately, by LIVE, which put consumer spend on live music at £6.68bn in 2024 — an economic-impact measure on a different basis, not a component of the GVA figure.

How many UK grassroots venues close each year?

The Music Venue Trust's Annual Report 2025 recorded 30 permanent closures over the year, from a remaining base of 801 grassroots music venues. The deeper problem is margin rather than closure alone: 53% made no profit at all, on average margins of 2.5%, and 6,000 jobs were lost across the sector. That fragility is central to the market argument for booking infrastructure.

What do UK grassroots gigs pay?

The GX Index is the only published dataset of observed market rates: thousands of weighted fee data points across UK cities, refreshed monthly, with percentile rates by city and line-up size and a public methodology. It is free to cite with a link.

How many venues book live music in the UK?

GigXchange's venue directory maps thousands of UK venues that book live music across hundreds of UK towns and cities — a broader lens than membership bodies because it includes pubs, bars, arts centres and social clubs with regular live music. Live counts are published on the site.

Can I reuse these statistics?

GigXchange figures: yes, free to cite with a link, with several datasets released under CC BY 4.0. External figures (UK Music, Music Venue Trust) should be cited to their original publishers.