London’s music licensing system can price culture out before the doors open

The gate sits before the campaign

A promoter can build an audience, book artists and create a strong identity for an event, yet still lose the project before the doors open. Licensing is often treated as a compliance stage at the edge of creative work. In practice, it decides which ideas can enter the market at all.

The Race Equality in Music Event Licensing (REMEL) report, published by Black Lives in Music on 14 October 2026, examines that gate. The project began in 2023 after Black Lives in Music and the Musicians’ Union raised concerns with the Mayor of London. Its partners include the Greater London Authority, Metropolitan Police Service, UK Music, LIVE, promoters, artists, venue operators and community representatives.

The report draws on surveys, interviews, focus groups, workshops, Freedom of Information requests, licensing data, case studies and desk research. It concludes that Black and South Asian-led events face disproportionate scrutiny, restrictions and cancellations. Genres including Afrobeats, Hip Hop, Drill, R&B and Dancehall are described as receiving more scrutiny than Indie, Pop and Rock.

That distinction matters commercially. When a genre or audience becomes a proxy for danger, the cost appears in additional security, insurance and compliance demands, cancelled dates, displaced events and venues choosing programmes they believe will attract less regulatory friction.

A large number still needs a boundary

REMEL estimates that £127 million to £141 million of live-music spending is lost each year through cancellations, displacement and suppressed activity. It projects more than £650 million over five years.

Those numbers are important, but they should not be presented as audited losses. Black Lives in Music’s own questions-and-answers page says the annual figure is a modelled estimate of foregone spending, not a directly recorded total or a measure of lost GDP. It combines published market data, proxies, survey findings and estimates from industry professionals. The organisation also says its survey was self-selected and is not used to claim how common each experience is across the whole industry.

That candour strengthens the report rather than weakening it. The absence of complete official data is part of the problem: without consistent records of applications, objections, conditions, withdrawals, refusals and appeals, institutions cannot test whether comparable events are treated comparably.

The parliamentary Fan-led review of live and electronic music, published in April 2026, had already heard that the culture associated with the former Form 696 risk-assessment process continued after the form itself was scrapped. It called cultural diversity a national strength and urged local authorities to embed it in music plans. REMEL moves that concern closer to the operational question: what evidence was used, how was risk defined and could the decision be challenged?

Transparency is part of cultural infrastructure

The useful creative-economy lesson is not that safety and culture compete. They should reinforce one another. Black Lives in Music explicitly supports robust licensing and proportionate policing; the Metropolitan Police told The Guardian it would consider the findings while maintaining its focus on fair, evidence-based contributions and public safety.

The design failure appears when a serious decision is hard to inspect. A fair process should separate five things:

• the specific, current evidence about this event;
• the condition or decision that follows from it;
• the written reason for that decision;
• the route and deadline for a challenge;
• the outcome data that allows patterns to be reviewed.

This is more than good administration. It affects investment. A promoter deciding whether to develop an artist from a 1,000-capacity room to a larger venue needs to understand the rules and likely costs. A venue choosing its programme needs confidence that unfamiliarity with an audience will not be converted into an unexplained risk premium. An insurer or sponsor needs a record that distinguishes event-specific facts from assumptions about genre.

The decision for London organisations

REMEL makes 19 recommendations, including an independent review, clearer evidence standards, published licensing data and stronger accountability. Those require institutional action; promoters should not be expected to document their way out of structural inequality alone.

But cultural organisations can make one decision now: treat every restriction, additional cost and cancellation as structured evidence, not an isolated inconvenience. Record what was requested, by whom, on what basis, when it changed and what it cost. Ask for reasons in writing and retain comparable cases.

That record will not fix unequal treatment by itself. It can make patterns visible, improve challenges and help authorities measure whether reform changes outcomes. London’s cultural economy is built not only by the events that happen, but also by the ones the system permits to exist.