Bands and Fans Shut Out and the Reality of Grassroots Music in 2025
The grassroots music circuit is changing, with artists and fans navigating new barriers to live music, so what does the future of the scene hold?
Venue closures and struggles for musicians are not a new concept. Since the early 2000s, the number of grassroots music venues closing has been increasing, accelerated in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic as financial hardships worsened. In 2023, Music Venue Trust recorded two per week, and in 2024, this slowed, but to a still alarming one every (MVT) fortnight.
Rising rents, energy bills and operating costs have created a perfect storm, with the MVT reporting that financial pressures accounted for 44.2% of venue closures last year.
When a venue shutters its doors, the impact ripples far beyond the local music scene. Staff lose their jobs, suppliers lose contracts, and shows are cancelled. Local tourism and surrounding businesses that rely on gig traffic take a hit. For artists, especially emerging ones, the collapse of the grassroots circuit makes touring increasingly impossible. With tours shrinking in size and scope due to these rising costs, certain towns and regions are being erased entirely from the grassroots circuit.
In the 1990s, the opposite was true. The so-called “toilet circuit” of sticky-floored pubs, back rooms and community centres scattered across the UK, was where countless indie, rock and metal bands perfected their sets and grew their audiences. Oasis supported bands at the Boardwalk in Manchester. Coldplay played early gigs at The Dublin Castle in Camden, as ‘The Coldplay’. Arctic Monkeys packed out Sheffield pubs years before their debut album. Those venues became cultural hubs, community spaces, and springboards for what later would turn into global success.
Over time, however, a series of changes chipped away at that infrastructure. The smoking ban in the mid-2000s hurt the hospitality industry, with some institutions recording a 7.3% drop in sales immediately after. Rising urban rents saw many central pubs and clubs converted into flats or restaurants, and gentrification squeezed venues out of city centres.
Over the past three decades, the average length of tours has dropped dramatically, from 21.9 shows in 1994 to just 10.9 in 2024. This decline reflects a shrinking live circuit, with just 12 primary cities now hosting the majority of grassroots tours, while secondary locations see only a fraction of the activity they once did.
For emerging artists, this means fewer opportunities for gigs, which leads to knock-on struggles: making connections with new audiences, refining performances, gaining experience, and using the grassroots circuit in the way their predecessors once did. A generation of bands now finds themselves caught between a lack of performance space, and the demands of a digital-first industry.
Building a Career in 2025
One band wrestling with these changes is a Sheffield-based group Till Forever Falls Apart, consisting of John Booth, Cam Scott, Bryn Eccleston and new addition Fran Douglas-Gray. Together, they are navigating the realities of being a relatively new band in today’s climate.
Till Forever Falls Apart have already undergone a transformation. Originally known as h:sharp, and consisting of only John, Cam and Bryn, the group decided to rebrand as their sound and their group evolved. For them, the shift wasn’t just a change of aesthetic, it has become a catalyst for online and in-person growth, giving them a stronger identity that they find is resonating more with their audience, as a result of their new music and accompanying aesthetic.
John explains: “With h:sharp, nothing fit. Every poster had a different font. Now, with Till Forever Falls Apart, it just clicks into place.”
The rebrand also reflected a sonic evolution. Where h:sharp leaned indie, Till Forever embrace heavier sounds — post-hardcore, metalcore, and alternative influences. Strongly influenced by mid-2000s emo, bands like Bring Me the Horizon, Funeral for a Friend, Underoath and Deftones inspire their own music. This fluid identity also helps combat gatekeeping in music communities and allows them to play around with their sound, opening themselves up to wider appeal and new ways to express themselves.
“With h:sharp, nothing fit. Every poster had a different font. Now, with Till Forever Falls Apart, it just clicks into place.”
But it wasn’t only the sound or the name that shifted, marketing suddenly felt more intuitive, purposeful and far more consistent. John, who takes the lead on shaping much of their materials, such as posters and flyers, explains that the name change provided them with a mood board to build from. Instead of piecing things together one poster or merch design at a time, they now had a clear and recognisable brand that tied everything together, something they are encouraging from other bands in this struggling landscape.
Beyond the bands own work, John has launched a Sheffield DIY label and Implied Noise, promotion company. Implied Noise fills the gaps left by a shrinking scene. Drawing inspiration from the DIY collectives that have long defined punk and hardcore scenes, it functions simultaneously as a label, a promotions company and a community hub. The idea is not simply to release their own music, but to create a community that other bands can use.
The band really values having a chance and a space for live, in person events, with John adding: “Physical experiences are going to be way more valuable to a person than just, scrolling past them on TikTok or just seeing a video, because it does give them that thing of accomplishment and like, kind of belonging”, a sentiment very contrasting in a time where most artists are focused on their numbers on Spotify and social media.
For Implied Noise, it is about having a community and supportive network, regardless of background, which is useful to other small bands, in a time where having an ‘in’ is almost crucial to moving forward in your career. Bryn also blamed social media for fans having high expectations from the beginning of an artist's career: “Most, like, new arrivals have come from something, but you can't expect us to have props on stage and this and that just because you've seen a band that is at our level that has had it, we're not doing that. We can't afford it. We're starting from the ground up, from with Till Forever Falls Apart.”
In a city where grassroots venues are under threat, and even legacy venues like The Leadmill and Dorothy Pax have closed their doors, Implied Noise is aiming to keep the alternative scene thriving, even using less busy week nights to try and gain crowds in the venues around Sheffield, in the hopes of keeping these venues in our grassroots scene.
Social Media vs. Stage Presence
For both Till Forever Falls Apart, and Implied Noise, social media is a useful tool, but it doesn’t replace live shows, or real life connection.
John is clear: “You can be a musician without TikTok. You can’t really be a band without live shows.”
Bryn and Cam however, acknowledge that platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels are vital for visibility in 2025, with some promoters refusing to book bands who don’t hit certain follower thresholds, with Bryn adding “Sometimes you can’t get to those home bases without online engagement. But labels are now gatekeeping songs unless they go viral on TikTok. It’s a bit too much.”
“You can be a musician without TikTok. You can’t really be a band without live shows.”
This trend isn’t unique to grassroots acts. In the last few years, several major label artists have gone public about being pressured to create viral clips before labels would release their music. Halsey, Florence Welch (of Florence + The Machine) and FKA twigs all complained about TikTok being treated as a mandatory marketing tool. The band clearly and understandably feels the pressure of this, John said “It’s not about the music anymore. That’s where it should be at.”
Social media has changed the industry considerably in the past 20 years, from YouTube launching Justin Bieber’s career, and TikTok has skyrocketing the likes of PinkPantheress and Steve Lacy, turning them into well-known names. Discovering new talent is easier than ever, but for the artists, maintaining attention has become increasingly difficult.
“It’s not about the music anymore. That’s where it should be at.”
The band are also critical of chasing trends for the sake of virality. Cam explained that doing a trend just because it’s trending doesn’t work, because people can tell when it’s fake. Instead, they point to examples of acts that balance both worlds, noting Pierce the Veil’s fandom for their consistency online and in person.
Loyalty, however, the band believe, is built in physical spaces, explaining: If someone comes to see you live, that’s loyalty, and scrolling past you online isn’t the same. The band are also critical of chasing trends for the sake of virality. Cam explained that doing a trend because it’s trending, doesn’t work, because people can tell it’s fake.
The economic challenges don't just stop at venue doors, as the band points out, music is “in everything”, from featuring in films, in the background of shops, fashion shows, even when you step into a lift, and yet it remains so underfunded. Streaming royalties often equate to fractions of a penny per play. The band even talked of a hypothetical “digital minimum wage” to protect artists, noting how unfair it feels that platforms can profit while musicians scrape by.
This push-and-pull between online visibility and the need for live performances shapes grassroots music in 2025. A really well-performing TikTok can ignite overnight fame, but without live shows and clean performances to back it up, that can’t translate to real-world success.
Grassroots Venues Under Pressure
The intimacy of smaller venues is irreplaceable, the band insist, noting a more welcoming atmosphere, but in this shrinking scene, Cam warns of a future where UK grassroots will mirror the American underground scene, where if you can get power, you have a venue to perform at, from basements to warehouses. However, should these consistent closures carry on, grassroots spaces will be forced underground, and even with the resilience of bands like Till Forever Falls Apart we could still be looking at a declining scene.
The national picture is just as bleak. London has lost venues like The Crobar, Manchester’s Night & Day Café has fought legal battles to stay open, and Birmingham has seen the Sunflower Lounge repeatedly threatened.
Campaigns like MVT’s , which encourages communities to collectively Own Our Venues, purchase and protect venues, show one route forward. But against rising costs, it feels like swimming upstream.
Historically, grassroots venues have been incubators of talent. Without them, the next Arctic Monkeys or Oasis may never emerge.
Shared Barriers: Fans and Artists Alike
When talking about accessibility, it’s easy to separate the conversation into two camps: the needs of disabled fans, and the survival of grassroots venues for artists. But in reality, both groups are facing barriers that are deeply interconnected. The struggles of fans and musicians feed into each other and amplify the decline of grassroots culture.
For disabled fans, grassroots venues often pose physical and sensory challenges. Many operate out of old pubs, warehouses or converted industrial buildings that were never designed with access in mind. While venues may try to adapt, installing ramps, lifts, or creating calm zones comes with significant financial costs and, in some cases, structural impossibilities, while still leaving gaps when catering to different disabilities.
A music fan like Kirstie Marfleet, who lives with multiple disabilities, including being Deaf and Autistic, as well as exploring an EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) diagnosis, describes how a ramp doesn’t make her experience accessible: the real barrier is being crushed in a crowd, or being forced to stand for hours in an overstimulating environment, with a physical condition too that makes this even more of a struggle.
Yet while larger arenas sometimes provide better infrastructure, they also introduce new hurdles. Tickets sell out faster, travel costs are higher, and for many disabled fans, making long journeys or staying out late in big cities is a logistical nightmare. Grassroots venues should, in theory, offer a closer, more intimate, and more affordable way into live music. But when those smaller venues are either closing or struggling to provide adequate adjustments, the result is exclusion on both ends of the spectrum, and as a result of the current situation, Kirstie has to make the choice for herself to not attend due to the additional stress and concerns for her well-being.
For emerging artists, the barriers are just as stark. Every time a grassroots venue closes, it’s not just one less stage, it’s one less chance to build a fanbase. Touring is already shrinking, with average runs halved compared to the 1990s. Secondary towns and smaller cities, once reliable tour stops, are increasingly bypassed. For a band like Till Forever Falls Apart, that means fewer opportunities to play close to home, fewer places to test new material, and fewer spaces to foster the loyal connections that can’t be replicated online.
In this sense, artists and fans are being locked out together. Disabled fans often can’t attend the shows that do happen, while artists lose the opportunity to even put those shows on in the first place. The shrinking grassroots circuit undermines accessibility twice over: first by reducing the number of venues available, and secondly by increasing financial strain onto the venues that do survive, which makes accessibility measures even harder to implement.
There’s also a cultural cost. Grassroots venues aren’t just the buildings themselves; they’re social hubs where fans can form communities and bands can grow alongside them. When those spaces disappear or remain inaccessible, both sides of the exchange suffer. Fans miss out on formative experiences, while artists lose the grassroots audiences that have always been the foundation of the UK music scene.
Accessibility, then, isn’t just about ramps and seating. It’s about whether the entire ecosystem of grassroots music remains accessible in the wider sense: affordable, local, and available to all who want to take part, whether that is on stage or in the crowd.
In today's scene, the barriers are mounting on both sides. Unless they are addressed together, the danger is that artists and fans alike will find themselves excluded from the very culture they are trying to sustain.
Accessibility Challenges
Jack Eckhardt, events manager at Sheffield’s Corporation, where Implied Noise host many events, and where the interview with Till Forever Falls Apart took place, has spent four years grappling with the issue. He says they want every show to be for everyone, but the financial side can be extremely costly or logistically impossible.
Older buildings, often converted factories or warehouses (which Corporation is), were never designed with accessibility in mind. Ramps and lifts can be added, but space remains scarce. The addition of disabled seating reduces capacity, tightening the margins that have already been attacked by rising costs. Corporation can only store five accessibility chairs, leading to tough ethical choices about who gets them.
“We want every show to be for everyone, but the financial side can be extremely costly or logistically impossible.”
From the fan side, the barriers are even starker. Kirstie, pointed to the fact that “Just because you’ve put a ramp in doesn’t mean you’re accessible.”
Further explaining that she find that a lot of venues aren’t accessible, because there is nothing to stop her from being trampled.
Her autism and anxiety exaggerate the problem, making tightly packed grassroots spaces overwhelming. Larger arenas sometimes fare better, with allocated seating and more crowd management, but indie venues rarely go beyond token ramps or wheelchair access.
Kirstie’s wish list is still very simple: designated calm areas, disability seating separated from rowdy crowds, and an understanding of needs beyond wheelchair use could allow her to attend live music events and take part in the scene. This however, has not been an option for her.
Sheffield bands like Till Forever are aware of the problem, admitting that smaller acts have little control over venues, but Bryn has praised Sheffield’s overall scene as comparatively inclusive. We know that positive examples of accessibility at live music events exist. Bludfest, a festival cited by Kirstie, has made accessibility central to its ethos, actively listening to feedback and improving year on year. For her, it’s a model of what the industry could be.
The question is whether other events and venues will follow suit, or whether accessibility needs will remain another barrier shutting fans out.
Whose Responsibility?
The debate over accessibility and survival often circles back to responsibility.
Fans argue that minimal steps (ramps, token wheelchair spaces etc) fall short of true inclusion, seemingly sending a blunt message ‘Venues want the ticket sale, but don’t care if disabled attendees are actually having all their needs met, in order good time.’
However, venues counter that adapting buildings is financially unfeasible, with Eckhardt insisting: “Our protocols are as fair and helpful as possible within the realities we face.”
Occasionally, individuals step up: Ed Sheeran has funded a music school in Sheffield. Yungblud has made accessibility part of his brand. Frank Turner has spoken at Music Venue Trust events, campaigning for fairer treatment of grassroots venues and smaller artists, but philanthropy cannot replace policy.
Elsewhere in Europe, governments recognise this. France subsidises music venues as part of cultural infrastructure. Germany funds Kulturzentren, which are community centres that often double as gig spaces. The UK has no equivalent safety net.
Until that changes, the barriers remain: financial, digital and physical.
What’s Next for Grassroots?
Despite the obstacles, bands like Till Forever Falls Apart refuse to give up. They’re preparing to release a new EP, planning to build on their local, Sheffield audience, and experimenting with ways to sustain their growth as a band. They are also crafting a sense of “lore” around their music, with Bryn framing the question: “Are we telling your story or ours?”
At the same time, they’re investing energy into Implied Noise, building a DIY infrastructure that supports not just themselves but other bands.
This resilience reflects a long tradition. Punk bands in the 70s built their own labels. Hardcore acts in the 80s organised their own tours. In 2025, it is once again a necessity.
The broader ecosystem is also adapting. DIY tours, house shows, and community-run venues are springing up to fill gaps left by closures. Campaigns by organisations like like Music Venue Trust continue to lobby for protections for musicians and venues, but the scale of the challenge is unprecedented. Rising costs, lack of accessibility, and chronic underfunding it is like swimming against the current.
Still, the heartbeat continues. Bands, fans and venues alike are refusing to let grassroots disappear.
“Music is in everything — shops, films, fashion shows — yet it’s still so underfunded.” – Bryn, Till Forever Falls Apart
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my MA Magazine Journalism Major Project! Below are some other aspects, such as my acknowledgements, critical review, audience and critical reflection.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
I would like to thank my supervisor, Ross Clarke, for your support, guidance, patience, and encouragement throughout this project, and for always challenging me with the question, “But are you happy with it?”, also for responding to my last-minute, sometimes slightly panicked emails. I would also like to thank my other course leaders, Jane Bentley and Rachael Jolley, for your invaluable support, teaching, and guidance over the past year. As daunting as moving into industry is, as a result of your teaching, I could not feel more well-set up for that transition.
To my parents, Karen and David, thank you for your unwavering belief in me, your seemingly endless patience and your support, even in my most stressful moments. I am beyond grateful for your constant encouragement and for always being there whenever I have needed you.
Thank you to the participants of this project for your insights, willingness to help, and for sharing your experiences with me. At this point, I would also like to thank my wonderful concert buddy, Maddi, without whom I would not have been aware of the extent of so many of these issues that are so ingrained and overlooked in the live music scene.
Finally, I am incredibly grateful to my friends, both in and out of the Maglab. Jade, Alanya, Chloe, and Magda. Thank you for keeping me grounded, listening to my rants, and for being the best pub partners after our production days. To Conor and Aidan, thank you for keeping me laughing, for your encouragement, and for making sure I didn’t always take myself too seriously.
INTRODUCTION:
The aim of this project is to explore and outline barriers in the music industry, relating to accessibility, both for artists and fans. As someone who has grown up around music, attending gigs regularly, I have witnessed a various issues affecting attendees of live music: such as a lack of understanding of accessibility requirements from different venues, or a feeling of being unsafe in live music spaces. Similarly, regarding accessibility for artists, I have been working in the scene as a photographer for four years and have seen copious amounts of talent from young musicians who have struggled to gain consistent attention online, from fans, or labels, to use as the foundations for a career. Furthering this issue, in the UK, two music venues close every week in 2023, with a slight decrease in this in 2024, but still a staggering and unsustainable rate of one venue closing every fortnight (Music Venue Trust, 2024), furthering the struggle for artists to share their music away from online platforms, and make human connections with people, which is of course, what music is about. In a time where the arts are so unstable, how can music be made accessible for everyone, as a career or as an attendee of live music events?
CRITICAL REVIEW:
This critical review looks into how the barriers that both fans and artists experience in grassroots music are being presented in the media. Media coverage often treats these challenges separately: many outlets cover issues experienced by grassroots venues; discussing the closures, rising rents, and shrinking touring circuits, and accessibility is treated as a separate conversation to these issues.
Often, the conversations on grassroots venues closing are based solely around a lack of finances, or larger bands taking a stand against closures (and the band becoming the focal point of the article). Media outlets such as The Big Issue and The Guardian have reported on a variety of venue closures, but often focusing on the historical significance of these venues, how groups like Artic Monkeys, or Oasis used to play in these venues, which are now closing their doors permanently. Granted, this does sometimes delve into the effects on emerging artists, who wanted to use the venues in the same way bigger bands did to get their career started. These are also often treated as simple news stories, ‘a venue is closing, and an accompaniment of information about the time it was open’. There is also the coverage that centres in on the loss of cultural landmarks, with less attention given to the implications for disabled fans and the overall lack of accessibility in grassroots music as a result.
Similarly, the barriers relating to disabled fan access are often covered, with recognition that larger venues need to improve their disabled access, large outlets, such as BBC have covered stories like these. But when it comes to smaller venues, the recognition that change needs to happen comes from individuals experiencing these issues firsthand and documenting it online, such as @disabled_eliza (158K) and @rollwithru on TikTok, who have both talked about their experiences at concerts and festivals, as disabled people. There are also groups who focus on accessibility in music, such as Attitude is Everything, however this often isn’t recognised in the mainstream media, as not everyone is affected by these issues.
In a time where grassroots music is becoming less accessible, my goal is to fill in the gap in overlapping coverage of these issues, because by keeping an element of separation in these barriers, overlooks how the decline of grassroots venues exacerbates the challenges disabled fans face in attending live music events, and the decline of a once thriving scene.
AUDIENCE:
My feature is written to be pitched to VICE, so while aiming to keep it in line with their tone, my goal was to provide a story which focuses on the opinions and experiences of my interviewees.
The audience for VICE is younger (Millennials and Gen Z), who often have more liberal views and an interest in underground scenes and alternative subcultures, which aligns strongly with the nature of this feature. The interviewees were also selected to with this in mind, leaning toward alternative subcultures to be interesting to a typical VICE reader and attempt to ensure relatability for the audience.
As VICE is often centred around social commentary and sometimes delves into youth culture, the story fits particularly well with the struggles of young musicians trying to break into the industry. These could be the friends of the readers, their siblings, or creators they follow on platforms like TikTok, making the story resonate more with them. The content reflects the experiences and challenges of the interviewees, such as navigating the music landscape, exploring ways to engage with new fans, and balancing online presence with garnering a real fan base. VICE’s colloquial tone is consistent throughout the feature, both in my writing and in the choice of, style of, and editing of the video clips, creating a cohesive and expected experience for a typical VICE reader.
By also exploring the barriers fans face, the feature adds a second layer of relatability, as readers may recognise their own experiences in supporting the artists they love. This dual perspective aims to highlight the relationships between fans and musicians, in an industry experiencing challenges on all sides, having a direct impact on those relationships.
The feature is designed for online engagement, incorporating video elements that introduce interviewees in a way that shows their personality. This is used to add human interest to the article and show the people being affected by these struggles. By combining elements of writing, photography, video and infographics, the article aims to educate and inform in a way that feels relevant to VICE’s readership.
CRITICAL REFLECTION:
Overall, I enjoyed this project and found it interesting throughout, however, I did come across several challenges and feel that if I had been able to avoid these, I could have improved the output for the project.
One of the main challenges I encountered was that everything started coming together later on in the project, due to both how the project evolved as well as personal circumstances. This gave me less time to work on my article, do research and even contact potential interviewees. This had a direct effect on the lack of time at the end of the project, so when it came to writing my article, I had less time to go as in-depth as I would have liked. An example of this is in the interview with Kirstie, where she mentioned Bludfest, and I would have contacted the organisers to get comments on accessibility. This interview was conducted the day before the deadline, with a pre-established contact, after an interview with a disability activist fell through. Initially, I was concerned that it would not have the same strength, however, Kirstie provided a very interesting perspective, as someone who is unable to engage with the scene, and I was able to overcome not getting comments from the Bludfest team, as I have my own experiences of the festival, having attended both years it has been active.
While tight deadlines and last-minute changes to plans are an expected part of journalism, this did prove frustrating, however, it did force me into problem-solving and last-minute adaptation, which is in itself a valuable skill in industry. In hindsight, I could have found ways to make my project come together earlier, and this would have allowed me to schedule interviews earlier and move them if necessary to adapt to changes in my situation. This emphasised the importance of proactive planning and flexibility, which I will keep as a consideration when working as a journalist.
Another challenge I faced involved collecting survey responses. Despite finding various ways to share my surveys, getting responses was a struggle, and I did end up with a lack of responses to my surveys, to pull interviews or comments from. Luckily, I was able to gather responses from people I knew personally, as I chose this topic because the barriers I explored in this project directly affect people in my life, so I was able to call on them to get relevant perspectives. The downside of this was that I was lacking insight from a wider audience, but my current network made the project more manageable, especially with the aforementioned time crunch. If I were to redo this aspect, I would have approached my current network differently- following rejection from two Facebook groups I approached, I would have asked them to help me, as they already have an ‘in’ with some of these groups. Furthermore, I would have reached out to other prominent figures in the community, and hoped I would have had more positive responses. This would have helped me to avoid the compromise to the overall variety of the work, as my perspectives would have been from more people. That said, I do feel that the comments I got from both the venue and music fan I have included add relevance and context to this issue, and work very coherently together to show the issues facing disabled fans of live music.
Once I found my feet in this project, I also narrowed down the subject area considerably, leading me in a different direction than originally anticipated. My idea was to look at social and physical barriers that make fans less able to engage with live music, but through my own research, Kirstie's interview and the responses from Jack Eckhardt, focusing on the physical accessibility aspect linked the article together more strongly, rather than dilute it with articles on queerphobia and sexism, which would be more impactful as the focus of their own articles.
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