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I think it all depends on where you live. In my area just about every pubs hosts live music .... I can play (and do) 10 pubs in a 5 mile radius of my house ... 2 actually in my road and 5 within walking distance. The better bands at the busiest pubs can pull £500 a gig so the moneys ok too. The pubs that don't put the music on tend to have quiet weekends so they always seem to go back to hosting bands. If you take the music out of pubs then you need to compete price wise with Spoons, keep the music and you can charge a lot more for the beer. This point was well proven when Wetherspoons opened a pub right next door to our busiest music pub .... on a busy Sat night there are 10 times more people in the Music pub despite the fact every drink is a lot dearer.
Fullers have been a great supporter of live music and we have a lot of Fullers pubs locally so that helps. Pubs without major brewery support have a harder time paying for quality live music and they will generally be the first to have to cut back on spending.
This year and next year is mainly theatre gigs for me paid on pure ticket sales so if there is a pub live music downturn it hopefully won't affect us to much. Obviously we took a right spanking money wise last year and the first half of this year.
As @BrizzleRocker says above, it’s not about the money. My band generally pulls about 200, maybe 250 for a normal pub. Bike rallies and bigger shows get more. We are a 4 piece, so 50 quid a man. The way I look at it is I get to play guitar with my mates and get my money back for the night out, the rehearsal and a set of strings, so it’s a hobby that effectively pays for itself.
edit. Plus it’s an excuse to buy/sell/change a guitar every now and then.
During the course of a week I think that I played two pubs and a couple of clubs. I was given the chance to play a third club but I already had a gig with my own band. His view was that the music scene was already dying back then. During the 60’s and 70’s he was playing two clubs a night on a regular basis.
In close to 40 years of gigging I think that I have only twice played two venues in a 24 hour period.
Before Lockdowns Heaps of Glasgow pubs and clubs at Weekends were rammed with people watching all sorts of live music from Midday until Late...
I don't expect it to be any different when everything opens up again....
Mini beer and town festivals and special events seem popular replacement - beer, dancing and music.
The pubs that plan to change or engage customers in new ways will probably keep going and may make more of live music.
it’s one guy singing to backing tracks ,literally karaoke gigs , it seems a popular thing now as landlords can pay a pittance ,
Granted, this was in a mainly rural area, but it's the way things are going. In my youth the opportunities for listening to live music seemed limitless, but back then there was a massive difference in the way people accessed music. A lot of folk didn't even have a record player so when you saw even a mediocre band live it was like "wow!" I remember going to see The Sweet when I was maybe 15, the first time I had heard proper live rock music, and the effect was staggering. I just don't think people are as easily impressed today.
One of the big differences between the 60's, 70's and even the early 80's compared to today has been the demise of the working men’s and social clubs. These clubs would host live music at least 4 times per week.
These were the sorts of clubs where you'd get a couple or more generations of a family enjoying a night out together.
It's gone, move on adapt or give up. We've just undergone, or rather are still undergoing, a seismic event which may reshape our society in many ways. I don’t know what effect it will have on the live music scene. Maybe it will further damage it or maybe there will be pent up demand which will reinvigorate it? Whatever happens, it’s the bands than can adapt who will survive. I’m certainly not expecting to do what I’ve always done.
I've been on this earth 65 years and it's sure as hell a vastly different place to when I was born. We are constantly reacting and adjusting to changes in society, the environment and technology. The alternative is to try and live in some snapshot existence when you personally thought life was perfect and it's ridiculous.
If we still lived in the world where people relied on clubs and pubs to be their main source of fun/entertainment, most of us wouldn't be playing guitars and have all these wondrous toys to play with. The tech that has created the affordable wizardry we enjoy is the same tech that has done for the pub/club industry.
I think people will always want live bands, but around here it's always mostly been about private parties if you want to make money.
There are two pubs locally which we love playing because we're popular there, but we sacked off slogging round shitty boozers years ago, they mostly can't afford to pay enough to make it worth it.