Ask any working musician in the UK how the last few years have been and you’ll get a familiar answer. Costs have gone up, fees haven’t, and the gap between the two keeps growing.

The cost of living crisis didn’t create these problems from scratch, but it made all of them worse at once. Here’s where the money is actually being squeezed and who’s feeling it most.

The Costs That Crept Up for Freelance Musicians

For a freelance musician, getting to the gig is often the first hit. Petrol prices hit a record high of nearly 192p a litre in July 2022, and although the average has since settled to around 135p, fuel is still a real cost. If you’re driving across the country for a £100 set, it can swallow a big chunk of the fee. Van hire and ownership got pricier too, with running costs, insurance and repairs all climbing at once.

Then there’s the kit. Supply chain problems pushed up the price of instruments, cables, amps and pretty much anything with a microchip in it. Rehearsal rooms started charging more to cover their own bills, and if you’re touring outside your home city, a night in a Travelodge now costs noticeably more than it did before the pandemic.

The pandemic is really where this all began. Live work vanished overnight, many players burned through savings, and just as gigs returned the cost of living crisis landed on top. Plenty of musicians never fully recovered from that double blow.

What Musicians Earn Against What They Spend

Here’s where the maths stops adding up. The Musicians’ Union publishes recommended minimums, and these give a sensible floor for what a player should be paid. For a casual pub or club engagement of up to three hours, the suggested minimum sits at around £167 per musician, while a function of up to four hours comes in near £223 per person.

💡You can see the full breakdown of musician rates in the UK on the union’s own site.

The problem is that real-world pay rarely matches those figures. Plenty of pub gigs still pay between £100 and £300 for a whole band to play a two or three hour set, not per person. When you split that four ways and take off fuel and parking, the hourly rate can drop below what you’d earn stacking shelves.

That gap isn’t down to venues being stingy. Most simply can’t afford more, which brings us to the other side of the story.

Why Venues Can’t Pay More

Grassroots venues run on margins so thin they’re almost invisible. The Music Venue Trust’s 2025 annual report found average profit margins of just 2.5%, with more than half of all venues making no profit at all. Soaring energy bills, higher business rates and increases to employer National Insurance have hammered the sector, contributing to roughly 6,000 job losses across the year.

The closures tell their own story. Around 30 grassroots venues shut permanently between mid 2024 and mid 2025, and the Trust reckons 175 towns and cities no longer get regular touring shows. Those places are home to an estimated 25 million people, so the loss of touring shows reaches a huge slice of the country. When a venue is barely breaking even, there’s simply nothing left in the pot to raise artist fees, no matter how much they’d like to.

The Knock-On Effects Across the Sector

When the numbers don’t work, people adapt. Many musicians have picked up day jobs, which cuts the nights they can play and thins out the talent available for midweek bookings. Venues, in turn, run fewer of those midweek gigs because they can’t justify the cost on a quiet Tuesday.

Emerging artists feel it worst. Touring used to be how new acts built a following, but with travel, accommodation and equipment all dearer, plenty of young musicians can’t afford to leave their home town. The risk is a scene shaped mainly by those who already have money behind them.

Heading into 2026 there are small signs of movement. A voluntary £1 levy on arena and stadium tickets is starting to channel money back towards smaller venues, with the first round of grants distributed through the LIVE Trust in 2026.

The levy isn’t yet mandatory, though, and the Music Venue Trust has called on the government to legislate if the industry doesn’t hit its targets by the end of June 2026. Ministers have signalled they’re open to doing so, with Creative Industries Minister Ian Murray publicly urging major promoters to step up.

So Where Does That Leave UK Musicians?

The picture isn’t great, but it’s not hopeless either. Pay is lagging behind costs, grassroots venues are hanging on by a thread, and freelance musicians are absorbing most of the damage.

There are small signs of progress, like the ticket levy funnelling money back to smaller venues, but none of it is moving fast enough to undo the squeeze. If you work in or around live music, understanding where the money actually goes is the starting point for pushing back on it.