It depends which market you mean, and in August 2026 most of them read lower. As of the August 2026 issue of the GigXchange Index, the UK median for a 3–4 piece wedding band was £990 — £52 below July, after July had risen £37 on June. The issue attributes more of that to a deeper pool pulling the median toward the middle of the distribution than to any change in what couples will pay. Corporate events slipped to £812 for the same lineup, ending three issues flat at £839, and the pub figure fell £25 to £350, its third consecutive fall.

The honest caveat: the Index has published monthly issues since spring 2026, so month-on-month movement is real but the run of data is short — nobody should extrapolate a year's trend from a season of issues. Each monthly report states its own movement against the previous issue, so the trend line grows one dated point at a time.

Figures are artist take-home medians from 4,431 approved observations across 13 UK cities — a net 141 more than the July issue. Every monthly issue is frozen on publication, so a quoted number never moves after you print it, and the live rates index always shows the current figure.

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Less than most people assume, and per gig the answer is often no. As of the August 2026 GigXchange Index, London's median for a 3–4 piece wedding band was £1,053 against Edinburgh's league-leading £1,067 — and the whole thirteen-city league now spans just £22, from Edinburgh down to Manchester at £1,045. That compression is a model change rather than a market move: location-less evidence such as national price lists now counts for every city, so a city's fee depends more on which end of the market a band works than on the city itself (which UK city pays wedding bands the most).

On annual income the picture inverts and then flattens: the UK Musician Earnings 2026 report (published April 2026) put London musicians at roughly £30,000 against a £20,700 national average — but found the premium largely swallowed by London's cost of living. On a net-of-rent basis, Scotland's live market compared well that spring: the April issue showed Edinburgh (£1,779) and Glasgow (£1,678) leading 3–4 piece wedding fees against London's £1,355.

Per-gig figures are artist take-home medians from the dated monthly issues; the live rates index carries the current city-by-city picture.

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Private parties pay a UK median of £866 for a 3–4 piece band as of August 2026 — £124 behind the £990 wedding median. That is a wider gap than July showed, and the first issue in which the two function markets have stopped reading as interchangeable at this lineup size.

Corporate events pay £812 for a 3–4 piece as of August 2026, £178 behind weddings. That ends a run of three issues in which the corporate figure held flat at £839 — the earlier reports attributed the flatness to fixed budgets that do not negotiate. Festivals sit at £669 for the same lineup.

At the other end of the scale, a 3–4 piece pub gig pays a median £350 as of August 2026 (what pub gigs pay) — so the same band earns far more at a function than in a pub.

All figures are artist take-home medians from the August 2026 issue of the GigXchange Index, built from 4,431 approved observations across 13 UK cities. The live rates index breaks both gig types down by city and band size, refreshed nightly.

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96.3% of upcoming UK grassroots gigs publish no price at all, per the State of the Circuit 2026 census, captured on 6 August 2026. Of the 8,989 upcoming gigs GigXchange held on that date, only 331 published any price.

The essential caveat, stated wherever that figure appears: a missing price is not a free gig. Only 74 of the 8,989 are explicitly recorded as free entry. Everything else is simply unknown — and that opacity is the finding. A punter cannot price a night out, an artist cannot see what comparable rooms charge, and a venue booking without a reference point learns nothing from either overpaying or underpaying.

The census is a deliberate snapshot: every figure was measured against the directory on 6 August 2026 and fixed at that date, so it can be cited without the number moving underneath the citation (why every figure carries a date).

The performer-fee side of the market is measured separately by the GigXchange Index, whose monthly issues publish artist take-home fees by city, gig type and band size — see the live rates index.

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UK session musicians earn around £49,000 a year on average (Salary Expert UK) and UK producers around £41,000 (Glassdoor UK), while live-focused performers sit at £20,000–25,000 (Indeed UK) — figures as consolidated in the UK Musician Earnings 2026 report, published April 2026.

The gap reflects the shape of the work: session and production income is repeat-contract work, while live performance depends on venue-booking networks and one-off engagements.

Geography moves the average less than expected. London musicians earn more on paper — roughly £30,000 against the £20,700 national average — but the report finds the premium largely swallowed by London's cost of living. On a net-of-rent basis, Scotland's live market compares well: the April 2026 GigXchange Index showed Edinburgh (£1,779) and Glasgow (£1,678) leading the UK for 3–4 piece wedding-band fees that month, against London's £1,355.

These are annual and per-gig figures from published sources, each dated in the report. For the current per-gig picture — which has moved since April — see which city pays most now and the live rates index.

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The UK median fee for a solo wedding act is £330 as of August 2026, with most bookings between £233 and £450. The top end reaches £600. The solo figure barely moved on July — a £2 shift.

Adding musicians raises the fee, but not in a straight line. As of August 2026 the wedding curve runs £330 for a solo act, £526 for a duo, £990 for a 3–4 piece and £1,489 at five-plus. The step from duo to a 3–4 piece is the steepest on the curve — a £464 jump, steeper than July's £429 — which is one reason trios and quartets dominate UK function work.

These figures are from the August 2026 issue of the GigXchange Index, built from 4,431 approved observations across 13 UK cities. Every figure is the performer's take-home, with agency commission already normalised out (why every figure is take-home), and each cell publishes four percentiles rather than an average.

For the current solo figure in a specific city or event type, the live rates index is refreshed nightly and free to use.

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The UK median fee for a 3–4 piece wedding band is £990 as of August 2026 — £52 below July. The middle 50% of bookings fall between £717 and £1,367, and the premium tier reaches £1,880. The issue attributes most of the fall to a deeper pool pulling the median toward the middle of the distribution, not to a change in what couples will pay.

Band size moves the fee more than anything else. On the August 2026 wedding curve a solo act sits at £330, a duo at £526, a 3–4 piece at £990 and a five-plus band at £1,489 — see what a 5+ piece wedding band costs.

City matters less than it used to look. As of August 2026 the thirteen published cities run from Edinburgh at £1,067 to Manchester at £1,045 — a £22 spread, down from £523 in July, because the Index changed how location-less evidence counts (which UK city pays wedding bands the most).

Every figure is the artist's take-home rather than a client-facing agency price, and each cell publishes four percentiles instead of a single average (how to read the percentiles). These figures come from the August 2026 issue of the GigXchange Index, built from 4,431 approved observations across 13 UK cities. The live rates index shows the current figure for any city, band size and event type.

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The average UK musician earns around £20,700 a year from music, as of the UK Musician Earnings 2026 report (published April 2026, drawing on Help Musicians' Musicians' Census of roughly 6,000 respondents).

The average hides a sharply unequal spread: 43% of UK musicians earn under £14,000 a year from music — below the full-time minimum-wage equivalent — and the bottom earning tier is bigger than the rest combined. The report calls this the single most important statistic in the 2026 picture.

The paradox is the industry around it. UK music contributes around £8 billion a year in gross value added (UK Music, This Is Music 2025), yet most of that value flows to labels, publishers, streaming platforms and a small number of top-tier touring acts rather than working performers. More than half of UK musicians rely on non-music income (do musicians need a second job).

These are annual-income figures consolidated from published UK sources in the report. For what individual gigs pay right now, the live rates index tracks fees by city, band size and event type.

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The UK median fee for a 5+ piece wedding band is £1,489 as of August 2026, with most bookings between £1,130 and £1,907. Premium-tier bookings reach £2,837. The five-plus end was the only part of the wedding curve to rise meaningfully on July.

Per musician, the economics have levelled: as of August 2026 a wedding quartet works out near £248 a head, and the five-plus median spread across six players comes to about £248 as well — where in July the bigger band still cost less per chair. The full August 2026 wedding curve runs £330 solo, £526 duo, £990 for a 3–4 piece and £1,489 at five-plus — see the 3–4 piece figure for the mid-market picture.

These figures come from the August 2026 issue of the GigXchange Index, built from 4,431 approved observations across 13 UK cities. Every figure is the band's take-home rather than a client-facing agency quote, and each cell publishes four percentiles (p25, p50, p75, p90) so a single premium London booking cannot drag the typical figure upward.

The live rates index shows the current 5+ piece figure for any city and event type, rebuilt nightly.

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Function bands are not a separate use case in the GX Index — the data groups by wedding, corporate and private party — but wedding is the closest proxy for function work, and Scotland publishes at two levels.

The clearest Scottish figure is the regional cell. As of the August 2026 issue, a 3–4 piece wedding band across Scotland sits at a £1,148 median — the middle half between £730 and £1,662, the premium tier at £1,981 — on 25 observations, against the London region's £903 on 94. Regional cells are built only from rows collected in that region, so this is the local comparison.

The city cells read closer together: Edinburgh £1,067, Glasgow £1,065 and London £1,053 for the same lineup as of August 2026. That is because, from the August issue, every city cell also counts evidence that carries no location — national price lists and union minimums — and the same shared layer sits behind all thirteen cities. Edinburgh's cell rests on ten locally collected rows and Glasgow's on eighteen, so treat the city figures as a national answer wearing a city name until more Scottish fees are reported (which UK city pays wedding bands the most). Five-plus bands publish at £1,641 in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London alike for the same reason.

So Scotland outpaces London per gig at the regional level — the Scotland-versus-London question in miniature. All figures are artist take-home; client-facing prices typically run higher where agency commission applies. The live rates index carries the current Scottish figures by city, lineup and event type, refreshed nightly, and corporate and private-party cuts are available on request.

This answer began as a journalist-style question through the /press ask box — asked once, answered publicly for everyone since.

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The UK median fee for a 3–4 piece pub or bar gig is £350 as of August 2026, with most fees between £250 and £600. Pubs and bars are the lowest-paying gig type published in the GigXchange Index. Solo pub work sits at £250, a duo at £375 and a five-plus lineup at £525.

That figure is £25 below the £375 printed in July 2026 — the third consecutive issue in which it has fallen. Unlike July's drop, none of this one is a data-correction artefact: the rows withdrawn in August came from a source that contributes almost nothing to pub cells. July's fall, by contrast, was mostly a correction — an audit quarantined rows that should never have counted (how corrections are handled) — and June's £425 had itself been revised down from the £487 published in April and May 2026.

For comparison, as of August 2026 a 3–4 piece earns a median £990 at a wedding and £866 at a private party — pub work pays a fraction of function work for the same lineup, though a month of steady residency nights can still out-earn a single wedding.

These figures come from the August 2026 issue of the Index, built from 4,431 approved observations across 13 UK cities. The live rates index has the current pub figure by city and band size.

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There is no single typical gig fee, because gig types sit far apart. As of the August 2026 issue of the GigXchange Index, the UK median for a 3–4 piece band runs from £350 for a pub or bar gig up to £990 for a wedding, with private parties at £866, corporate events at £812 and festivals at £669. For a solo act the same spread runs from £175 in theatre and £250 in pubs to £330 at weddings and £385 for corporate work (the current wedding figure, what pub gigs pay).

Because the Index rebuilds every night at 05:00 UTC, the live figure moves. For the number that is true today, use the live rates index — its calculator returns the current p25/p50/p75/p90 spread for any UK city, band size and event type, free and with no signup. For a figure that is fixed and citable, quote a monthly issue with its date instead (how to cite the Index).

Every published figure is the performer's take-home in pounds, with agency commission normalised out, and every cell states the sample size behind it (what the sample size counts). The August 2026 figures above come from 4,431 approved observations across 13 UK cities.

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Over 50% of UK musicians rely on non-music income to sustain a music career, as reported in the UK Musician Earnings 2026 report (published April 2026, citing Musicians' Union member research).

The most common second jobs are teaching (around 32%), office work (around 21%), hospitality (around 18%) and freelance creative work (around 14%) — and many musicians combine two or more. The report's blunt framing: UK live music is, in effect, subsidised by hospitality and teaching, not the other way round.

The second-job rule follows directly from the income picture. As of April 2026, the average UK musician earns around £20,700 a year from music and 43% earn under £14,000 (the full earnings picture) — below what a full-time career can rest on, in an industry generating around £8 billion a year in gross value added.

These figures consolidate published UK sources — the Musicians' Union, Help Musicians' Musicians' Census and UK Music — into one dated, citable report, free to quote under CC BY 4.0 (how the licence works).

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Edinburgh still pays wedding bands the most in the UK, at a median of £1,067 for a 3–4 piece as of August 2026 — but the league it tops has flattened. Thirteen published cities now run from Edinburgh at £1,067 to Manchester at £1,045, a spread of £22 where July showed £523. London sits at £1,053.

Nothing moved in the market; the model changed underneath it. Roughly six in ten observations carry no city — national price lists and union minimums, which apply everywhere. Until August they counted towards the country and towards no city in it, so every city was built from a thinner pool than the nation around it. From the August 2026 issue such a row counts as evidence for every city: the same 1,052 location-less rows sit behind all thirteen wedding cells, and each cell records how much of its sample is local and how much is that shared layer.

The issue is candid about what that costs: across the city grid, 176 of 299 cells have no local evidence at all and only 95 stand on three or more local rows. Eight local observations sit behind Newcastle's wedding figure; ten behind Edinburgh's. Separating the league again needs musicians reporting real fees, city by city.

All figures are the band's take-home in pounds, from the August 2026 issue of the GigXchange Index — 4,431 approved observations across 13 UK cities. Every cell publishes four percentiles rather than one number (how to read the percentiles) and states when a figure publishes (publication thresholds); the live rates index shows the current league and lets you look up any city directly.

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Very few. As of 6 August 2026, only 331 of the 8,989 upcoming UK grassroots gigs GigXchange held said what it costs to get in — 96.3% published no price at all. Roughly 30.5% carried a ticket link of any kind.

The most important caveat travels with that number: a missing price means no price was published, not that the gig is free. Of all 8,989 upcoming listings, only 74 were explicitly recorded as free entry. Everything else is simply unknown — and that unknown is the finding.

The figures come from State of the Circuit 2026, measured on a single day against listings that come from public sources and from venues, promoters and artists directly. Because those sources skew towards ticketed events, the true share of free and pay-what-you-can nights across the country cannot be read from this data.

The report argues this opacity costs everyone: a punter picks the gig they can price, an artist with no reference point cannot negotiate, and a venue either overpays or underpays and learns nothing from it. For the current listings, and ticket links where they exist, see the live what's on page.

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As of 6 August 2026, GigXchange held 5,946 distinct acts with at least one dated grassroots gig on record.

The figure comes from State of the Circuit 2026, a census of the UK grassroots circuit measured on a single day and fixed at that date. As the report puts it, the circuit is a payroll before it is anything else — those acts were playing the 8,989 upcoming gigs counted on the same day, across 89 cities.

Treat the number as a floor, not a ceiling. It counts acts GigXchange can see on listed, dated gigs; performers who only play unlisted nights are invisible to it, and the listing sources skew towards ticketed events. Nothing here is modelled or projected — every figure in the census was measured directly against the directory on the capture date.

The live gig directory shows current listings and links each gig to its act and venue, so the up-to-date picture can be checked directly.

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As of 6 August 2026, GigXchange held 8,989 upcoming UK grassroots gigs across 89 cities, with 1,765 of them falling inside the next 28 days.

The figure comes from State of the Circuit 2026, a census taken on a single day and fixed at that date so it can be cited. Listings are imported from public sources and from venues, promoters and artists who list with GigXchange, then deduplicated and re-verified on a rolling cycle.

Read it as a count of what GigXchange can see, not a census of all UK live music. The sources skew towards ticketed events, so unticketed pub gigs are under-counted — probably heavily. A gig missing from the data is missing, not cancelled.

For the current figure, the live gig directory and the national what's on view refresh continuously — the numbers on those pages are read live at the moment the page loads, so they will differ from the dated census above. For who is playing these gigs, see how many different acts are on the circuit.

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No, on two counts — and both are deliberate, stated limits rather than small print.

First, scope. GigXchange lists grassroots live music: pubs, back rooms, open mics and independent venues, typically under 600 capacity. Arena tours and festival bills are excluded by design, because the grassroots end is the part of the circuit that is hardest to find, least well covered elsewhere, and most at risk. See what counts as a grassroots gig for the full definition.

Second, visibility. The listings come from public sources and from venues, promoters and artists who list with GigXchange. Those sources skew towards ticketed events, so unticketed pub gigs are under-counted — probably heavily. As the published method notes put it: the data is the rooms and gigs GigXchange knows about, not every room in Britain, and a gig missing from the data is missing, not cancelled.

Any figure quoted from GigXchange should therefore be framed as "gigs GigXchange can see", not "all UK gigs". The published census and the live what's on page both carry this caveat alongside their numbers, and it should travel with any quotation of them.

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A gig at an independent UK venue — typically capped under 600 capacity — by an artist who is not on a major-label arena tour. That is the working definition the GigXchange gig directory applies, as published on the directory itself as of August 2026.

In: pubs, basement bars, indie clubs, community halls, arts centres, and small folk, jazz and punk festivals.

Out: arenas, stadiums, the O2 chain, the Royal Albert Hall, Symphony Hall, the Barbican, premium dining-cabaret rooms, and mega-festival sites.

The directory also distinguishes gigs from open mics. Open mics are recurring weekly nights where any performer can sign up; the gig directory lists one-off shows — specific acts playing specific venues on specific dates. The open mic finder covers the recurring nights.

The grassroots end is the deliberate focus because it is the part of the circuit that is hardest to find, least well covered elsewhere, and most at risk — see is every UK gig listed? for what that scoping means when quoting the numbers.

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Saturday. Across the 90 days from 6 August 2026, Saturday carried 1,801 UK grassroots gigs and Monday carried 230 — under a sixth of it. Friday was second with 1,543.

Those figures come from State of the Circuit 2026, which counted every dated grassroots gig GigXchange held by the night of the week it fell on. The lopsidedness is the grassroots economy in one chart: rooms compete for the same two nights and go quiet for the other five, while the rent runs seven days a week.

The midweek gap is where open mics live — see which nights open mics run for the other half of that picture.

The pattern shifts week to week, so for the current spread use the live chart on the national what's on page, which shows this week's gigs by night and names the busiest one from live data. The census figures above are a dated snapshot of what GigXchange could see on one day, drawn from listings that skew towards ticketed events.

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Two public pages carry the live figure, no account needed.

The national what's on page shows the count of grassroots gigs over the next four weeks, with a city-by-city index and this week's gigs by night. The gig directory shows everything upcoming, beyond that four-week window, browsable by city and date.

Both are current by construction rather than because somebody remembered to edit them: listings are imported and re-verified on a rolling cycle, and anything past its date drops off on its own. The figures on those pages are read live from the directory at the moment you load the page, not cached from a report — which is why they move daily and why they are the wrong thing to cite in print without a date attached.

For a dated, citable number, use the census instead: 8,989 upcoming gigs across 89 cities as of 6 August 2026, from State of the Circuit 2026, which is fixed at its capture date precisely so a citation keeps meaning something.

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London, by a distance. As of 9 August 2026 the live what's on index showed 390 grassroots gigs in London over the next four weeks, with Glasgow next at 186, Manchester at 153, Liverpool at 113 and Birmingham at 85. Beyond that top tier it thins out quickly: State of the Circuit 2026 counted 8,989 upcoming gigs across 89 cities on 6 August 2026, so most cities hold a small share of a London-weighted map.

Two caveats belong next to those numbers. The four-week window moves nightly, so the city order can shift; the what's on page reads live counts at the moment it loads, which is where to self-serve the current figure for any city. And the numbers reflect what GigXchange can see: listings skew towards ticketed events, so unticketed pub gigs, a large part of the grassroots circuit, are under-counted. A gig missing from the data is missing, not cancelled.

For the overall count see how many gigs are coming up; for what qualifies, see what counts as a grassroots gig.

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Small. The median venue in GigXchange's directory of 2,622 active grassroots rooms held 200 people, as of 6 August 2026.

That figure comes from State of the Circuit 2026, measured directly against the directory on the capture date. It describes the rooms GigXchange can see — a set that includes pubs, back rooms and community stages — so it is a property of that sample, not a certified national statistic.

The Music Venue Trust's Annual Report 2025 (published January 2026), which covers venues under its stricter grassroots definition, put average capacity at 316 for the year to July 2025 — with average attendance of just 122, meaning the typical room was well under half full on a live night. Those are the MVT's figures and should be attributed to them.

Both numbers point the same way: the grassroots circuit is built of small rooms, which is also why most of a venue's live income is not ticket money. Capacity for individual rooms, where known, is published on each venue's page in the live venue directory.

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Around 838, according to the Music Venue Trust — the figure quoted in GigXchange's UK Live Music Yearbook 2026 (March 2026 edition), after a sustained run of closures. That is the MVT's count and should be attributed to them.

It sits alongside a much larger GigXchange figure — 2,622 active grassroots venues as of 6 August 2026 — and the two are not in contradiction, because they measure different things. The MVT counts venues meeting its own grassroots music venue definition. GigXchange's directory records every room it can see that books grassroots live music, including pubs, back rooms and community stages that fall outside stricter sector definitions. Quote whichever answers your question, with its source and date attached; do not average them.

The closure side of the same story — 78 venues stopping live music in the year to July 2025, 30 for good — is covered in how many venues stopped hosting live music, again on MVT figures.

Both reports are free to read and cite: the yearbook consolidates published UK industry sources into one dated picture, and every figure in it traces to a named, dated source.

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As of 6 August 2026, GigXchange's directory held 2,622 active grassroots venues, spread across 433 UK towns and cities.

The figure comes from State of the Circuit 2026, which measured every count directly against the directory on a single day and fixed it at that date. The same census recorded the median room holding 200 people, 1,413 rooms with a house PA, and only 231 with an in-house engineer — see what technical provision venues actually have.

State the sample honestly when quoting this: these are the rooms GigXchange knows about, not every room in Britain. Venue records are gathered and re-verified on a rolling cycle, and the count includes pubs, back rooms and community stages that book grassroots live music — a wider net than sector bodies draw. The Music Venue Trust's own count of UK grassroots music venues is a much smaller number under a stricter definition; see how many grassroots venues are left for that figure and why the two differ.

The live count is on the venue directory at any time — see where to find the current venue count.

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As of 6 August 2026, just over half of the 2,622 active grassroots venues in GigXchange's directory — 1,413 rooms — had a PA you can plug into. Only 231 had someone in-house to run it.

That last number is the one venue managers recognise: as State of the Circuit 2026 puts it, on most nights, in most rooms, the sound is whoever turned up.

The figures were measured directly against the directory on the capture date and fixed there. They describe the rooms GigXchange holds records for — 2,622 venues across 433 towns — not every room in Britain, and equipment records are only as current as the rolling re-verification cycle that maintains them.

For working musicians the practical version of this statistic is simple: assume nothing about the room until you have checked its listing. Each venue's page in the live venue directory shows its capacity, PA and backline where known, so acts can see what is on stage before they agree to play it.

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In the year to July 2025, 78 UK grassroots venues stopped putting on live music, and 30 of them closed for good — roughly one every five days.

These are the Music Venue Trust's figures, not GigXchange's. They come from the MVT Annual Report 2025, published January 2026, and are quoted with attribution in GigXchange's State of the Circuit 2026. Any use of them should credit the Music Venue Trust.

The economics underneath, from the same MVT report: the average venue lost £95,685 on live music over the year. That loss figure is why the downside of a quiet night lands entirely on the room — the argument both the £1 grassroots ticket levy and the Liveline Fund, the two sector responses the census discusses, are addressing.

GigXchange's own data adds the other half of the picture: everyone counts the closures, so the census counts what is still there — 2,622 active grassroots venues as of 6 August 2026, and 287 towns where a venue survives but no gig is visible.

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As of 6 August 2026, 287 UK towns held a live grassroots venue record in GigXchange's directory and no gig listed anywhere GigXchange could see. Between them, those towns hold 555 rooms.

The caveat is the headline: this is a claim about visibility, not silence. It does not mean 287 towns have no live music. The gig sources skew heavily towards ticketed events, so a pub back room running a free Thursday with a chalkboard outside is invisible to them by construction. Some of those rooms are quiet; most are simply invisible to the platforms that list live music — and that invisibility is the finding in State of the Circuit 2026.

Why it still matters: if a gig is not listed anywhere a person would look, it may as well not be happening — and the venues least likely to be listed are the smallest, the cheapest to get into, and the ones with the least to spend on being found.

The same picture from inside the sector: the Music Venue Trust reported 475 venues — 59% of grassroots rooms — operating with no major promoter activity at all, in its Annual Report 2025. Related: how many venues stopped hosting live music.

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The live figure is on two public pages, no account needed.

The venue directory at /gigs/venues shows the current count of UK grassroots venues, browsable by town and city, with capacity, PA and backline detail on each venue's own page. The press page publishes the same directory size in its quick-facts grid, pulled from the live platform rather than hand-maintained — so it is current as you read it, and it will move as venues are added, retired or re-verified on the rolling cycle.

Because those numbers are live, they are the wrong thing to put in print without a date. For a dated, citable figure use the census instead: 2,622 active grassroots venues across 433 towns and cities as of 6 August 2026, from State of the Circuit 2026, which is fixed at its capture date so a citation stays checkable.

If you need a cut the published pages do not show — a single region, a capacity band — ask via the press page; the request goes to the founder directly.

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Mostly not from tickets. For the year to July 2025, 67.9% of a grassroots venue's live income was not ticket money at all — it was the bar.

These are the Music Venue Trust's figures, from its Annual Report 2025 (published January 2026), quoted with attribution in GigXchange's State of the Circuit 2026. The same MVT report puts the average ticket price at £11.56, average attendance at 122, and average capacity at 316 — the typical room sells well under half its capacity on a live night.

As the census draws the conclusion: the question a venue is really asking when it books an act is not "will this sell tickets", it is "will this fill the room". The average venue lost £95,685 on live music over that year, which is why the downside of a quiet night — the thing the £1 ticket levy and the Liveline Fund both exist to soften — lands entirely on the room.

The GigXchange contribution to this picture is transparency at the gig level: 96.3% of upcoming grassroots gigs publish no price at all, so audiences, artists and venues are mostly guessing at each other's economics.

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Honestly: nobody publishes a town-by-town closure ranking, including us — so if you are asking which town has been struggling worst for venue closures this year, any "worst-hit town" headline you read is anecdote, not data. The national closure figures come from the Music Venue Trust, who reported 78 venues stopping live music in the year to July 2025, 30 of them for good; the MVT is the authoritative source for closure counts.

What our census can measure is a different, earlier signal: darkness. As of 6 August 2026, 287 UK towns held at least one live grassroots venue in our directory with no gig listed anywhere we could see — 555 rooms between them. That is visibility, not closure: a pub running unadvertised Thursday sessions is invisible to every listings platform by construction. But a town whose only venue has gone dark online is a town where the circuit is struggling to be found, which is its own story.

For a specific town or region, ask us for a custom cut through the /press ask box and we will tell you what the directory can and cannot support.

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Almost all of them, for both performers and audience. A small minority charge £2 to £5 entry, usually when there is a feature act or a prize pot.

That is the picture published on the open mic finder as of August 2026. Every listing there is tagged Free or Paid, so you can filter before you travel, and the finder publishes the live free-entry percentage, computed from all current listings on every page load — quote that live figure with the date you read it rather than a number from this article.

GigXchange's census, State of the Circuit 2026, goes further: it calls the open mic circuit the only genuinely free stage time in the country. That framing matters for anyone writing about routes into live music, because the free stage is where most working acts learn to hold a room before anyone pays them — 1,270 such nights across 185 towns as of 6 August 2026.

This describes open mics specifically. For booked grassroots gigs the honest answer on cost is different: most gig listings publish no price at all.

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Listings are re-verified on a continuous rolling cycle: the longest-unchecked nights are automatically re-checked every night, so the whole directory keeps cycling through verification rather than rotting from the bottom. Reported corrections are reviewed within 7 days and confirmed ones are marked as closed, and every listing carries a "Last verified" badge showing exactly when it was last checked.

New nights enter the same way. Submission is free, takes about two minutes and needs no account; every submission is reviewed, and the venue is verified as real, before the night goes live. Venues can claim their listing to keep sign-up times and equipment details current, and corrections and closure reports from readers are welcomed.

This is the maintenance model published on the open mic finder itself as of August 2026 (with the 7-day correction promise from October 2026), and it is why the directory's headline statistics are computed live from all current listings on every page load rather than written once and left to go stale.

It is still a directory of what GigXchange knows about, not every session in Britain — see how many open mics run in the UK for the dated count and its sample caveats.

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Mostly by turning up. Most UK open mics use walk-in sign-up on the night, typically 30 to 60 minutes before the music starts; the rest take sign-ups online via the venue's website or social media.

Slots are usually 10 to 15 minutes or two to three songs, ranging from 5 minutes at busier nights to 20 minutes at quieter venues, and most hosts announce a time limit at sign-up. Arrive early — popular nights fill up fast.

Bring your own instrument and any pedals, and check the listing for what is on stage before you travel: equipment varies widely between rooms, and each listing on the open mic finder breaks down the venue, the sign-up time, the slot length and the backline provided. The finder also publishes the live percentage of nights using walk-in sign-up, computed from all current listings — quote that figure from the page with the date you read it.

This is the published guidance on the finder as of August 2026. For what these nights cost to attend, see are open mics free; for when they run, see which nights open mics run.

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As of 6 August 2026, GigXchange counted 1,270 recurring open mic nights across 185 UK towns.

The figure comes from State of the Circuit 2026, measured directly against the directory on a single day and fixed at that date. As the census puts it, the open mic circuit is bigger than most people assume — it is the only genuinely free stage time in the country, and it is where most working acts learn to hold a room.

These are verified recurring nights GigXchange holds records for, not a census of every session in Britain. Listings are checked and re-checked on a rolling cycle, and closed nights are removed, so the count reflects nights believed to be currently running rather than an accumulated historical list.

The live figure, filterable by city, day of the week, entry fee and equipment, is on the open mic finder, which reads its numbers from the directory as the page loads. For where these nights sit in the week — overwhelmingly midweek — see which nights open mics run.

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Overwhelmingly midweek — which is exactly when the rooms are otherwise quiet.

State of the Circuit 2026 describes the two halves of the week fitting together: booked gigs pile onto Friday and Saturday (Saturday carried 1,801 gigs to Monday's 230 in the 90 days from 6 August 2026), and the midweek gap is exactly where open mics live. As the open mic finder's own published notes add, weekends are quieter for open mics because most venues reserve peak trading nights for paid acts.

That is part of why open mics matter beyond the stage time they give away: they fill rooms every week of the year, on nothing but word of mouth, on the five nights when the rent is still running and the booked circuit has gone home.

The live day-by-day split — including which single night currently carries the most sessions nationally — is published on the open mic finder, computed from all current listings on every page load, and each listing can be filtered by night. Quote the live percentages from that page with the date you read them.

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Because they are the entry point. State of the Circuit 2026 makes two claims about the UK's open mic circuit, both worth quoting.

First, it is the only genuinely free stage time in the country — free to watch and, almost always, free to play. Every act you have paid to see somewhere bigger had to learn to hold a room somewhere first, and for most working acts that somewhere is an open mic.

Second, it props up the quiet half of the week. Booked gigs concentrate on Friday and Saturday while the rent runs seven days, and the midweek gap is exactly where open mics live — filling rooms every week of the year on nothing but word of mouth. See which nights open mics run.

The circuit is also larger than most coverage assumes: see how many open mics run in the UK for the dated count. Until recently it was almost entirely undocumented, which is why GigXchange maintains the open mic finder as a free national directory, verified on a rolling cycle.

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Yes. Every figure the GigXchange Index publishes is artist take-home — what the performer actually receives — not the client-facing price.

Sources that quote gross-of-commission prices, such as published market rates and agent-rostered artist profiles, are converted to take-home before any percentile is computed, using a 20% take-home adjustment (net = gross ÷ 1.20). Agent-brokered bookings use the booking's own recorded commission instead of the default. Sources that are already net — union rates, venue budgets, verified submissions — pass through unchanged.

The practical consequence for anyone comparing quotes: client-facing gross prices typically run around 20% higher than the Index figure for the same engagement. A wedding band quoted through an agency at a headline price is not receiving that headline price.

Fees are also the only money the Index will count. Ticket prices, licensing fees, equipment hire and door splits are refused at ingest (how the quality gates work) — so a published cell is never a blend of artist fees and other money.

The full normalisation rules, as published in July 2026, are on the methodology page.

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The distinct pool behind the GigXchange Index stood at 4,431 approved observations across 13 UK cities in the August 2026 issue, with 407 published cells — a net 141 observations on July. The pool size is published in every monthly issue.

Two different numbers describe the sample, and the Index is explicit about which is which. The n shown against a cell counts weighted samples applicable to that cell, not unique gigs: an observation counts at every geographic level it informs and once per re-sighting, so cell-level n runs far higher than the pool of unique observations. The distinct pool — unique approved observations — is the smaller, more conservative figure quoted per issue.

Since the August 2026 issue a city cell's n also includes evidence that carries no location — national price lists and union minimums, which apply everywhere — so it means observations applicable to that city, not observations collected in it. Each city cell publishes both counts, local and shared, so a reader can tell a city the Index knows from one it is estimating (when a figure publishes).

Re-sighting is the mechanism behind the weighted gap. A listing that survives week after week is information (the price is stable), but it must never count twice — so when a weekly refresh meets a listing it already knows, it bumps that observation's sighting counter instead of inserting a copy.

Journalists quoting the Index should state the sample: it is observed market data, not a census, and thin cells are flagged as such. Each published cell also exposes its own sample size and refresh time on the live rates index.

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Every observation faces the same gates before it can touch a published figure, whatever its source.

Has the basics — no amount, no source, no gig type: no entry. From a known source — only the vetted source list can write to the Index, through a single ingest funnel. Is an artist fee — the database layer itself refuses ticket money, gear hire, licensing and door splits. Passes the plausibility check — each gig type carries per-musician-per-hour bounds, so a £40 wedding quartet and a £20,000 pub solo both bounce automatically; restored in July 2026 after ten weeks quietly out of the pipeline, by the August 2026 issue it had turned away 169 rows on implausible amounts and 29 more for an unrecognised gig type. Not a duplicate — every observation is fingerprinted; a refreshed listing bumps a sighting counter rather than becoming a second row. Is not our own test data — any row traceable to a seed or test account is refused at intake, and the check fails closed when it cannot tell; extended in August 2026 from the two sources July fixed to all six live sources, which is how August's 160 seed rows were found rather than missed.

The ticket-derived club model — a room-economics estimate grounded in Music Venue Trust occupancy data — runs in shadow mode and contributes nothing to published figures.

Every rejection is logged with a reason and the raw submission, for audit — the audit trail is treated as part of the product. Anonymous public submissions are additionally rate-limited, sanity-checked and human-reviewed before they count.

When the gates themselves fail, the fix is published rather than hidden (how corrections are handled). Full detail on the methodology page.

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The GigXchange Index rebuilds every night at 05:00 UTC, re-running the full aggregation over the previous day's intake.

Around that nightly cycle, each source has its own cadence as of August 2026: published market rates refresh on Mondays; the artist-profile panel snapshots on the 28th of each month; approved public submissions flow in daily; and Musicians' Union and Equity minimums refresh annually.

A full monthly report is then published as a fixed issue, compiled overnight on the 28th and published within days. The August 2026 issue was the first on that settled cadence: compiled on 28 August, its window runs from the July issue's close on 31 July to 28 August — four weeks, not a calendar month — with the published cells taken from the 3 September 2026 refresh. Each issue carries its city league tables, methodology notes, a downloadable CSV and its own DOI (where to download the datasets).

Every rebuild is archived rather than overwritten, which is what makes issue-on-issue comparisons possible — and why a monthly issue, with its date, is the right thing to cite in print, while the live rates index is the right place to check the current figure (how to cite the Index).

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No. The GigXchange Index is a historical observation of fees that have been charged, asked or budgeted in the UK live music market — and it is explicit about what it is not.

Not a recommended price. It publishes where the market sits, not where any act should sit in it; a performer can undercut or exceed any figure with a clear conscience. Not an official benchmark. No industry body endorses or regulates the figures; independence is the point. Not financial advice. Evidence in, decision yours. Not a city guide, yet. Where a city cell carries no locally collected rows it is the national answer wearing a city name — the cell says so; read it before you quote it. Not the whole market. Most UK gig fees are agreed privately and surface nowhere — an index can only weigh what it can see.

Known gaps are reported in each issue rather than smoothed over. As of August 2026: 176 of the 299 published city cells rest on no local observations, and only 95 stand on three or more; confirmed platform bookings — the reference signal — still contribute zero rows; venue budgets restart from nothing; theatre has thinned to a single national cell and the club picture stays directional at three and four observations per cell; and no genre-level cells publish yet (the tags exist on every observation; publication waits on volume). Corrections to the Index's own data are documented in the open in the issue they land (how corrections are handled).

Fees in any individual engagement may legitimately fall outside any percentile shown. The full statement of limits is on the methodology page.

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A room in the UK that puts on live music at grassroots scale: pubs, bars, social clubs and dedicated small venues — the circuit where working musicians actually play — rather than arenas, theatres or festival grounds. Cathedral-scale rooms that host the odd gig are the edge case; where one appears it is there because grassroots acts genuinely play it.

Every venue is verified before it lists and re-checked on a rolling cycle, so the directory is maintained rather than scraped-once. As of the 6 August 2026 census that meant 2,622 venues across 433 UK towns and cities. A venue stays in the directory when it goes quiet — that is how the census can measure towns with venues but no visible gigs instead of silently dropping them.

Two things the definition is not: it is not a claim of completeness (a room we cannot see is not counted), and it is not a quality mark — listing records that a room programmes live music, nothing more. Before quoting venue figures, the methodology sets out collection and verification in full.

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Every GigXchange Index cell publishes four numbers instead of one: p25 (the budget end of the market), p50 (the median — half of bookings pay less, half pay more), p75 (a strong, well-paid engagement) and p90 (the premium tier). No arithmetic mean is computed or published anywhere in the Index.

The reason is the shape of the market. Averages lie where a Mayfair gala and a Tuesday pub slot share a spreadsheet: a single £25,000 corporate booking would drag an average up past hundreds of grassroots pub gigs. A median cannot be moved that way, and the four-point spread shows where any individual quote sits on the curve.

A cell is the meeting point of three axes: where (a canonical city, one of twelve UK regions, or the national baseline), what kind of gig (seven types, from weddings to theatre and pit work), and how many musicians (solo, duo, 3–4 piece, five-plus).

Every published figure is the performer's take-home in pounds (why take-home, not gross), and each cell states the sample behind it (what the sample size counts). The full framework is on the methodology page.

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A city or region cell needs three observations to publish; UK national baselines publish from one. Thin cells carry a low-sample flag.

What counts towards a city's three changed in the August 2026 issue. A city cell is now built from its own observations plus every observation in the pool that carries no location — national price lists, union minimums, published rate schedules — because a national price list is a price charged in that city too. The three-observation floor therefore counts applicable rows, so a city cell can publish with no locally collected evidence at all: as of August 2026, 176 of the 299 city cells do, and only 95 stand on three or more local rows. Every city cell publishes both counts, local and shared, so a reader can tell the difference. Region and national cells are untouched by the change.

Publication happens at three levels: city (major UK metros, with satellite towns folded into their hub — Hove reads as Brighton), region (the twelve official UK regions), and the UK baseline. When a lookup lands somewhere too thin to publish, the calculator walks the chain — city, then region, then the national figure with a regional adjustment — and tells you which level answered.

The regional adjustment layer blends ONS regional household income and family-spending data with public industry price benchmarks, tuned per gig type: corporate fees track regional wealth closely, wedding spend barely does, and pub fees hardly flex because venue economics set the ceiling everywhere. Adjustments only ever fill gaps — wherever real observations exist, they win outright.

Percentile estimates use linear interpolation rather than nearest-rank, avoiding artefacts at small sample sizes (what the sample size counts). The full rules are on the methodology page.

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Nine source classes feed the GigXchange Index, each with documented provenance: confirmed platform bookings, verified rate imports (externally sourced rate schedules checked on import), Musicians' Union and Equity published rates, publicly available published market rates, venue gig budgets, artist profile asking rates, reviewed public editorial rates, anonymous public submissions, and ticket-derived club estimates.

Six of those were live in the August 2026 pool: weekly refreshes of published UK market rates (Mondays), a monthly panel of artist-profile stated rates (snapshots on the 28th), union minimums (refreshed annually), verified rate imports, fees reported anonymously through the public form (reviewed, then synced daily), and human-reviewed extractions from public pages. Venue budgets and the ticket-derived club model remain withdrawn after the July 2026 audit and contribute nothing.

The Index is equally open about what is wired in but not yet flowing — including confirmed bookings, its reference signal, which still contribute zero rows — so it currently leans on asking prices and listings more than settled fees. That split is reported honestly in every monthly issue.

Every observation lands through one ingest funnel, tagged with source, gig type, band size, venue type and location, and each source class carries a published quota — a ceiling on how much of any one cell it may own, the nine ceilings summing to 1.00 — and the full table, with the reasoning behind each, is published on the methodology page. Nothing enters the published figures without passing the quality gates (how junk is kept out).

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Because an index that only ever reports good news about itself is not worth citing. Two issues running, the Index has used its own pages to report faults in its machinery rather than in the market.

A July 2026 audit found three faults and quarantined 225 observations in public: 123 ticket-derived club estimates approved when that model was meant to run in shadow mode, plus 62 artist-panel rows and 40 venue budgets traced to GigXchange's own seed and test accounts. Two sources left the pool entirely, and published cells stood at 280 in July against June's 310. The correction moved real figures — the pub median fell from £425 to £375 (what pub gigs pay).

On 8 August 2026 a sweep of the verified rate-import source found 160 rows that were never observations at all — auto-generated seed records, 156 of which had reached print. Nine more went the same day: six published-rate entries between £2,437 and £11,091 with no city attached, and three artist-panel entries including a £500,150 pub gig. The test-data screen now covers all six live sources rather than the two July caught, and fails closed when it cannot tell.

The policy is to correct forward, never backward — every number a past issue published stays as published, and the next issue documents what changed and why. It was not the first open correction: June 2026 documented a 25-row hygiene pass that revised the pub figure from £487 to £425. Corrections land in full, in the issue they are made (how the quality gates work).

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Yes, and you do not need to ask. The GigXchange Index — the live figures, every monthly report and the underlying datasets — is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. You can cite, quote, redistribute, adapt and build on it, including commercially, as long as you credit the source.

The attribution asked for is simple: credit "GigXchange Index, gigxchange.app/rates", and quote the date the figure was true — every published statistic carries one, because a rate index changes monthly and an undated number quietly becomes wrong (how to cite the Index properly).

There is no paywall and no signup anywhere in the data: the rate calculator, the market heatmap, the percentile cells, the full methodology and the monthly reports are all open. Each issue is published as an open dataset with a Zenodo DOI, plus mirrors (where to download them).

The same licence covers GigXchange's special reports — UK Musician Earnings 2026, the UK Live Music Yearbook 2026 and State of the Circuit 2026 — each of which states its own citation line on its page. Journalists, researchers and policy bodies are the intended audience, not an afterthought.

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Usually, yes. Much of the data is already published — every monthly Index issue ships a CSV and an open dataset with a Zenodo DOI (where to download the datasets) — so check the published cuts first.

For something the published sets do not cover — a single city, a date range, a venue type, a specific slice of the fee data — ask through the press page. Questions submitted there are answered directly, and data requests go to the founder's own inbox (founder@gigxchange.app), which he answers himself; as the press page puts it, we would rather the data was used than sat in a database.

What to include in a request: the cut you need, the date range, and your deadline. What comes back is what GigXchange actually holds — the press page is explicit that you will get "what we have" rather than an estimate dressed up as data, and figures that are not published will not be invented to fill a request.

Anything supplied follows the same terms as the published data: free to use with attribution to GigXchange and the date of the figures (how the licence works).

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The figures, yes — the directory itself, no. All published statistics — the GigXchange Index, the venue and open mic counts, and platform figures — are free to cite with a link to gigxchange.app, without asking first. The one thing GigXchange asks, stated on the press page, is that you do not bulk-extract or republish the directory itself.

The distinction in practice: quoting that a count or a fee figure stood at a given level on a given date is exactly what the data is published for. Copying the listings wholesale — the venues, gigs or open mic records themselves — into another product or database is the use that is not offered.

Between those two poles, most needs are already met. Aggregate cuts of the rates data ship as open CSVs with DOIs (where to download the datasets), and if you need a specific slice for a story or research project, ask — custom cuts are supplied where the data exists (how to request one).

Whatever you reuse, the licence terms are the same throughout: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, with credit to GigXchange and the date of the figures (how the licence works).

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The standard citation, as published on the Index itself:

> GigXchange Index, UK Live Music Booking Rates 2026. Available at: https://gigxchange.app/rates. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19663014.

For a figure in print, cite the monthly issue rather than the live page — issues are fixed, archived and individually DOI-registered on Zenodo, so a citation keeps meaning the same thing. Each issue page carries its own ready-made citation line; the August 2026 issue, for example, lives at /rates/reports/august-2026.

Whatever you cite, include the date. The Index rebuilds nightly and publishes a new issue monthly, so a statistic is only true on a date — "£990, August 2026" stays honest in a way "£990" does not. The live page is the right reference when you want readers to self-serve the current figure (what the live index shows now).

The licence is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 across the board — quote, adapt and republish freely with credit (how the licence works). A machine-readable snapshot also exists for automated use (the open datasets).

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Every monthly issue of the GigXchange Index is downloadable in three forms: the web report, a PDF, and a CSV of the published cells. Each issue is also published as an open dataset on Zenodo (DOI-registered) and its mirrors. A new issue is published every month, from April 2026 onward; each has its own Zenodo DOI and a Kaggle mirror, and from May 2026 a Hugging Face mirror too. The current list, with every DOI, is at /rates/reports.

The best index of everything available is the methodology page, which lists every issue with its observation count, download links and Zenodo DOI, alongside a machine-readable snapshot of the live figures at /data/rates-snapshot.json for automated use. The reports library collects the monthly issues together with the special reports — UK Musician Earnings 2026, the UK Live Music Yearbook 2026 and State of the Circuit 2026 — which publish their own CSVs and DOIs on their pages.

All of it is free under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — no paywall, no signup, commercial reuse welcome with credit (how the licence works, how to cite).

If the published cuts do not cover what you need — a single city, a date range, a venue type — a custom cut can be requested directly (how to ask for a custom data cut).

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Yes. There is no press office — enquiries go straight to the founder, a working UK musician, and he answers them himself. He is available on the record for gig economics, grassroots venue finances, small-venue compliance, and what booking actually looks like from the stage.

The fastest route is the ask box on /press: data questions from journalists on deadline are answered the same working day, chart included where it helps, and everything is CC BY 4.0 — free to quote with attribution to GigXchange. The press page also carries ready-made quotes on breaking stories, quick facts pulled live from the platform, boilerplate at three lengths, and brand assets.

Two honest limits. We publish member counts, directory sizes and market data, but not revenue or funding figures — we would rather say so than hand you an estimate you might print. And we only connect journalists with individual members with that member's explicit permission, never from a list. If we do not know something, we say so.

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Not yet, and deliberately so. GigXchange is fully committed to the UK: the grassroots gig economy here has a very specific set of problems (venues closing, opaque rates, unpaid gigs, a booking culture that still runs on DMs and word of mouth), and the platform exists to fix that properly, not partially.

That said, the platform is deliberately built to scale. The marketplace, the rates index and the directory are UK-first by design rather than UK-only, so expanding internationally, whether to North America or mainland Europe, is a question of when the foundations are strong enough, not whether.

If there is a territory you would like to see GigXchange in, say so via the contact form. Territory interest is actively monitored and genuinely shapes what comes next.

This answer began as a question through the /press ask box — a musician overseas asking: do we have plans to expand beyond the UK? Answered by the founder on 8 August 2026; asked once, answered publicly for everyone since.

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