The Liverpool City Region Live Music Venues Map was publicly announced at a live music sector recovery and sustainability consultation event titled ‘Keeping LCR Music Venues on the Map’ in March 2022.
A collaborative project initiated by the Liverpool City Region (LCR) Music Board and
researchers from the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool, it was developed as an extension to the mapping technology base used to build the Birmingham Music Venue Map (v1.0).
Extensive phases of data gathering have since seen the map’s initial launch of around 250 venues double in size, with over 500 venues now listed covering the six districts of the Liverpool City Region (LCR) – Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens, and Wirral.
Whilst pubs and bars form the bedrock of the city region’s live music offering, making up 63% of all music venues in the region, the city also boasts 46 premises where the provision of live music is the main business activity of the venue. This amounts to 9% of the total venue stock and a known capacity of 44,000 concert attendees. When including the region’s numerous festival spaces and stadia which frequently host major music events the potential known capacity is approximately 445,000 people.
In conducting this research, we have established that 251 (around half) of the region’s music venues opened or began programming live music in 2013. Demonstrating a blossoming of live music spaces emerging over the last decade, with only 34 closures recorded. However, the business intelligence that can be drawn from the underlying data demonstrates that over three-quarters of these venue closures have occurred since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overall net growth leaves no room for complacency.
Over 500 venues now listed covering the six districts of the Liverpool City Region
251 (around half) of the region’s music venues opened or began programming live music since 2013
As these figures show, the Liverpool City Region Live Music Venues Map is a tool which can illustrate the breadth of the region’s live music offering, making the case for a vibrant and growing live music sector which is crucial to cultural policy and tourism. The map acts as a mechanism for musicians, promoters, and other professionals in the live music sector to find hosting spots for their shows; and for the LCR Music Board to generate data insights that can be used to support the local music ecosystem including the development of policies to support live music in the region..
