‘No dancing whilst drinking’: Challenges and opportunities for Victoria’s live music venues

Despite the removal of COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions and a strong economic recovery, live music venues in Victoria continue to struggle. New factors, partly exacerbated by the pandemic, have presented challenges to music venues’ recovery across the state. These include recent inflationary pressures and their related effects on cost of living and discretionary spending, sharp increases in insurance premium, shifts in audience behaviour and a new generation of punters coming of age.

As a consequence of these factors, Victoria has lost a significant number of live music venues since 2018, and the rate at which new venues are taking their place has not kept up. Data analysis indicates that 338 music venues have been lost between 2018–2024 statewide. The loss of these venues, including many pubs and clubs, has ramifications for emerging musicians, who often rely on smaller venues to launch their careers and grow a following, as well as related professions such as technicians. These losses risk Victoria’s well-regarded standing as a hub for live music, which contributed to the approximate $1.1 billion of gross value added to Victoria’s gross state product in the 2022–23 financial year by the broader creative and performance arts sub-sector.

Several proposals have been floated to resolve some of the challenges that live music venues face, many of which involve government intervention. These include reforms to government funding, levies on major live music events as a revenue source for smaller venues, voucher programs for audiences and a government-underwritten insurance scheme. This paper sits alongside a quickly growing body of literature that has examined challenges facing live music venues nationwide, including a 2025 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts report inquiring into the challenges and opportunities within the Australian live music industry.