A two-year investigation, reported by the Guardian, says black and south Asian music events in London face more barriers than white events. It estimates the cost to the city at £127m to £141m a year.
Key takeaways
- A two-year investigation led by Black Lives in Music found that black and south Asian music events in London face disproportionate cancellations, restrictions and licensing barriers compared with white events.
- The Race Equality in Music Event Licensing report estimates that cancelled, displaced and prevented events cost London between £127m and £141m each year.
- According to the Guardian, the investigation found that many genres are labelled “high risk” even though there is little evidence to support that label.
- The report projects that losses will exceed £650m over five years, although the public summary does not set out the full method behind that figure.
The argument: unequal treatment is also an economic loss
Discussion of racial inequality in live music usually focuses on fairness: who gets to perform, who gets to promote, and whose audiences are treated as a problem to manage. The Race Equality in Music Event Licensing (REMEL) report, led by the industry organisation Black Lives in Music, adds an economic argument. The Guardian reports that the investigation found black and south Asian events in London are cancelled, restricted and refused licences more often than comparable white events. The report says this unequal treatment is costly as well as unjust, because it removes economic activity from the capital.
Put plainly, the argument is this. Live music events produce income for venues, promoters, artists, technical crews, security firms, bar staff, transport operators and nearby businesses. When an event is cancelled, moved somewhere less suitable or never staged, much of that income is lost or reduced. If the barriers that cause those outcomes fall more heavily on events linked to particular communities and genres, and are not justified by evidence of greater risk, then London is losing money through decisions it does not need to make.
This article argues that the report’s central claim is credible. Disproportionate restrictions on black and south Asian music events are an economic cost to London as well as an equality issue. The size of that cost is less certain than the headline figure suggests.
Evidence: the investigation found a consistent pattern of disproportionate barriers
The first piece of evidence is the pattern itself. According to the Guardian, the REMEL investigation ran for two years and examined racial inequality across London’s live music industry. Its finding was not limited to a single type of intervention. The report describes three overlapping barriers: cancellations, restrictions placed on events that did go ahead, and difficulty getting licences in the first place.
That matters because each barrier works at a different stage of an event’s life. Licensing barriers can stop an event before it is planned in detail. Restrictions such as conditions on capacity, timing or operation can make an event less viable even after it is approved. Cancellations hit hardest of all, often after promoters have spent money on artists, marketing and production. A pattern that appears at all three stages points to something systemic in how events are assessed, rather than to isolated decisions by individual venues or officials.
The Guardian describes racial inequality in the sector as “rife”, based on the investigation. The public summary does not say how many events, venues or licensing decisions were examined, which comparison groups were used, or how events were classified as black, south Asian or white. Those details are needed to judge how strong the pattern is. Even so, a two-year investigation finding the same direction of disadvantage across several kinds of barrier is a substantial piece of evidence.
There is also historical context in London. A police risk-assessment form once used for live music events in the capital was widely criticised for disproportionately affecting grime and other genres associated with black artists and audiences, and it was eventually withdrawn. The REMEL findings suggest that concerns about how certain genres are assessed did not end with that form. The public summary does not say which mechanisms are now responsible.
Evidence: “high risk” labels appear to rest on weak foundations
The second piece of evidence concerns how risk is judged. The Guardian reports that the investigation found many genres are labelled “high risk” despite a lack of evidence. This is central to the economic argument, because risk labels are what turn a perception into a practical barrier.
Licensing and event planning reasonably involve judgements about public safety. Authorities and venues need to consider crowd management, disorder and the welfare of audiences and staff. If a genre is treated as high risk, events in that genre may face extra conditions, extra security costs, closer scrutiny or outright refusal. When that label is supported by evidence, the cost may be justified. When it is not, the cost is imposed for no corresponding safety benefit.
The report’s finding is that, for many genres, the evidence does not support the label. If that is right, the extra cancellations and restrictions faced by black and south Asian events cannot be fully explained as a proportionate response to real risk. The economic losses that follow are then avoidable rather than the price of keeping people safe.
The public summary does not list which genres were found to carry unsupported “high risk” labels, who applies those labels, or what evidence the investigators looked for and failed to find. Those gaps are significant. The direction of the finding is still clear: the label appears to be doing work that the data does not justify.
Evidence: the estimated losses are large relative to the sector
The third piece of evidence is the economic estimate. The REMEL report puts the annual cost of cancellations, displacement and events that never take place at between £127m and £141m for London. It projects that losses will exceed £650m over five years.
The report counts three types of loss. Cancellation is the most visible. Displacement, where an event moves to another venue, date or location, is less obvious but can still reduce income through smaller audiences, less suitable spaces or extra costs. Prevented events are the hardest to measure, because they involve activity that never happened and so leaves no direct record. Including all three gives a fuller picture than counting cancellations alone. It also means part of the estimate depends on modelling what would have happened otherwise.
Even at the lower end of the range, a sum of this size would matter for a city that markets itself on its cultural life and night-time economy. It also changes who has a stake in the issue. An inequality that costs money affects venue operators, local businesses and public finances, not only the artists and audiences directly involved.
The case against: the cost figure may overstate what London actually loses
The strongest objection is economic and concerns the counterfactual. When an event is cancelled or prevented, the money audiences would have spent does not necessarily leave London. People may go to a different event, spend the evening at a restaurant or bar, or save the money and spend it later. From the point of view of the city’s total economy, some of the lost income may simply move elsewhere. An estimate that counts the gross value of lost events as a net loss to London would overstate the real cost. The public summary does not say how the REMEL report handles this, so it is not known whether the figure is gross or net of such substitution.
The same concern applies more strongly to prevented events. Estimating the value of events that never happened requires assumptions about how many there would have been, how large they would have been and how much they would have generated. Small changes in those assumptions can move the result a long way. The projection of more than £650m over five years adds a further layer of assumption about future trends.
A second objection concerns the source. Black Lives in Music is an organisation that campaigns on racial equality in the music industry. That does not make its findings wrong, and advocacy groups often produce rigorous research. It does mean the report should be read alongside independent analysis, and that its methods need to be published in enough detail to be checked.
A third objection is that disproportionate outcomes do not on their own prove unjustified treatment. Licensing decisions may reflect factors such as venue type, capacity, location, time of night or an operator’s history, and these may be unevenly distributed across genres and communities for reasons that are not directly about race. A fair test of discrimination would need to compare similar events that differ mainly in genre or audience. The public summary does not say whether the investigation did this.
These objections are serious, and they mainly weaken confidence in the exact figure. They do not overturn the underlying argument. Even if substitution reduces the net cost substantially, displaced and cancelled events still impose real losses on the specific promoters, artists and venues involved. And if risk labels are applied without evidence, the restrictions that follow are hard to defend whatever their precise cost.
Evidence that would change the conclusion
Several kinds of evidence would strengthen or weaken the argument.
Publication of the full methodology would be the most important. If the economic model accounts for substitution and still produces a large net loss, the conclusion would be much stronger. If the figure turns out to be a gross measure of event value with no adjustment for spending that moves elsewhere, the true cost to London would be lower, perhaps considerably so.
Like-for-like comparisons would also matter. Data showing that black and south Asian events face more barriers than white events of similar size, venue type, location and timing would make it hard to explain the disparity by other factors. If the disparities largely disappeared once those factors were controlled for, the case for racial inequality as the cause would be weaker, although questions about why those factors are unevenly distributed would remain.
Evidence on risk itself could cut either way. If incident data for the genres labelled “high risk” showed no higher rate of problems than other genres, the report’s case would be confirmed. If such data showed materially higher risk for some genres, some restrictions might be proportionate, and the avoidable share of the losses would be smaller.
Independent replication, by academic researchers, public bodies or industry groups with no stake in the result, would test whether the findings hold up. Responses from licensing authorities and police explaining how risk assessments are made would also help clarify where the barriers originate. Neither is described in the information currently available.
Sources and further reading
- The Guardian: exclusive report on the Race Equality in Music Event Licensing investigation and its estimates of the cost to London.
- Black Lives in Music: the industry organisation that led the two-year REMEL investigation.
- Local authority licensing policies in London: background on how premises and event licences are granted and what conditions they can carry.
- Published research on the night-time economy and live music economics: context for how event-related spending and displacement are usually measured.
Surfaced from the rss:guardian_music signal “music event licensing inequality”. AI-assisted draft, editorially reviewed.
