Culture, Media and Sport Committee — hearing of 2 September 2026: transcript & video

00:03 - 01:35

Speaker 3

Order, welcome to this meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee looking at the fan-led review of live and electronic music, and I'm thrilled that we are joined by our former committee member, now very important member of the House of Lords, Lord Brennan of Canton, who was commissioned by our committee to conduct the fan-led review. Before we start, Kevin, can I put on record our enormous thanks to you for this piece of work? You've done it incredibly thoroughly with a huge amount of effort. It's quite a challenge, and we must also through you thank the thousands of fans and venues that got in, that got involved in this. It's a, it's a remarkable piece of work.

There was lots of surveys and a lot of people attended events, and so from us to you, thank you so much for basically throwing everything at this and producing such an incredibly thorough and well-thought-out report. We're really grateful. And before I begin, I just need to remind members to declare any interests. But Kevin, I'd like to start the questions. Why, why do you think this was important?

Why, I mean, why did you agree to do it? Why do you think it's important that fans' voices, whether that's in arenas or grassroots venues or nightclubs, why is it important that they have the opportunity to have their say and have an input into how things unfold in the music sector?

01:35 - 02:59

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Chair, and thank you for that very kind introduction, and it was a privilege to, to be asked to do this, so from the start I had to accept when you, when you approached me about it. Um, I think it was really important because what struck me in 23 years as a, as an MP and then now, you know, going into that House of Lords, having taken a quite a deep interest in, in the music industry and all the issues around the music industry, was that we all and everybody in the music industry started off as music fans. Um, but I wonder whether they maintain that eye sometimes and ear, you know, in, in relation to, to the music industry, and that in music, fans' thoughts and considerations and passions often are the last thing that are thought about when it comes to, we're talking about live music here, but in general in music, and the voice of the fan is not really very well articulated in the music industry, in my opinion. So it was a great opportunity actually to go out and try to do a piece of work from the fans' perspective, which I don't, I think this committee should be commended for commissioning it, because I don't think anybody's actually really thought of doing that before. There was a, a fans' voice survey that was conducted just before this, and I wondered whether this would be a, you know, a piece of work that was needed, having that having been done, but everybody I spoke to said, "Yes, it is absolutely needed."

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