Photo Credit: William Hook
Music Venue Trust (MVT) has rolled out Hearby Pro to grassroots music venue members across the UK to better provide venues with control over their media & access to industry data.
This article was created in collaboration with DMN partner Hearby.
MVT, which represents the UK’s vast network of grassroots music venues, recorded 22 million audience visits and 175,000 events last year. The organization has been a driving force in keeping live music sustainable; MVT confronts rising costs, lost touring routes, and shrinking profit margins. In an effort to showcase member venues and their events, MVT counts on Hearby, the UK’s most comprehensive live music guide, to collect show details and present them on the MVT Gig Guide.
With Hearby Pro, MVT members can now own their pages and access Hearby’s unmatched live music data, from venue and artist directories to historical box office stats. This powerful tool allows venues to control their content on the platform and across Hearby’s partner networks.
In an MVT survey, 53% of venues reported no profit in 2024, with owners often not drawing salaries. Many remain under financial pressure from high VAT rates, licensing challenges, and breakdowns of artists touring circuits. MVT focuses on actionable solutions for live music venues to directly reduce costs & channel investment from the newly started £1 ticket levy with initiatives like Liveline Fund, Venue MOT program, free stage equipment replacement and removal of energy costs through solar panel installations.
MVT CEO, Mark Davyd, noted that the partnership with Hearby supports this mission of fixing the underlying issues rather than papering over them. As he explains on his Substack, “we have to fix the problems, not just keep supporting them.” The idea is to make venues stronger, to enable people to take risks, get the word out and to make touring viable for musicians, giving them sustainable careers as live entertainers while making the national circuit work again. Through next-gen tools and creative strategies, MVT and Hearby are working hard to make that idea a reality.
US-based Hearby has rapidly gained traction in the UK, providing the World’s Best Gig Guide and featuring more shows across the UK than any other source, from arenas to smaller, more intimate grassroots venues. Hearby Pro and MVT’s partnership represent a continuation of growth that includes collaborations with Ticketmaster UK, Ticketmaster Ireland & the UK’s largest news publisher Reach PLC.
“Hearby’s mission is simple – to get a few more people to a lot more shows. If we can do that, we help the R&D of the whole UK music scene.” said Gary Halliwell, CEO of Hearby.
