Eight years ago, Melbourne earned its stripes as the “live music capital of the world” when the Live Music Census found that Melbourne had more live music venues per capita than any other city across the globe.

But over the last few years, opportunities to play live music in Melbourne have begun to slowly fade away. Since 2019, the number of weekly gig venues has dropped by 19.4 percent.

Iconic spots for local bands, like the Gasometer Hotel and the Reverence Hotel have permanently closed. Meanwhile, it took a community campaign raising three million dollars to purchase The Tote and keep it a music venue, showing a demand for live music in Melbourne.

As the lack of music venues continues to decline there are less opportunities for musicians to play live music.

Melbourne musician Stefan Sepulveda has been playing music for over 10 years. He is a guitarist and vocalist in the emo punk band All Regards and has a solo project, Sidelines. Over the last few years, he has seen the effects of these changes.

“I think the big impact is to bands that are kind of starting out,” he tells upstart.  “There’s less opportunities [and] less venues that are kind of willing to take a shot on smaller bands as well.”

One option for musicians trying to make a living is touring interstate in Australia, but that isn’t easy.

“The geography of Australia makes it really hard,” he says. “The cities are so far away from each other.”

Playing interstate shows can help artists grow a following, however it often leads to them losing money, Sepulveda says.

“If you want to make it viable, you need to be super comfortable with not having many expenses.”

Most local musicians also must balance booking gigs, running social media and managing their schedule, all of which can take time away from creating music.

“This is the time that I want to be pouring into being creative and making the art that I love,” Sepulveda says.

Then there’s this growing lack of opportunities to play locally. As of February, Music Victoria has released the 2025 Live Music Venue audit, which was commissioned by the Victorian government to look into Victoria’s current live music scene. In the audit, they identified 2,441 venues that host live music across the state. However, 68.3 percent of those venues host less than one gig a month.

Additionally, Music Victoria looked into Victorian writers who were members of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS). APRA AMCOS is a copyright management organisation that helps songwriters get paid for their work. The aim was to look at which suburbs across Melbourne had the highest membership count. Some of the highest member suburbs included Brunswick, Northcote, Fitzroy North and St Kilda. All the top 11 suburbs saw a membership increase from 2021 to 2023.

There are now more songwriters and musicians, but less venues to perform in.

This has begun to affect musicians in Melbourne. Leon Cranswick is a bassist of the Melbourne band Possible Humans, which formed over a decade ago, has also noticed the change.

“We played our album launch recently for our second record, the start of this year and there wasn’t really many viable options,” he tells upstart.

They ended up playing at the John Curtin Hotel, a popular live music venue that regularly hosts small Australian and international bands.

“It was almost the only option really,” he says. “Those medium sized venues are just kind of harder and harder to come by.”

Building relationships with venues as well as getting a following on social media is crucial for bands to get opportunities to play regular gigs. Many up-and-coming musicians will book gigs with each other as individually they won’t be able to fill a venue.

Luckily for Cranswick, they now have venues reaching out asking them to play due to years spent building up their following and reputation.

Bands usually get paid based on ticket sales for venues that they play at, but it may vary depending on the venue. After a gig, they can also make some extra money selling merchandise and t-shirts.

Live music is still integral to Victoria, in 2023 performances in small venues, concerts and festivals generated an estimated $2.44 billion. According to Music Victoria, the average gig requires 29 separate job roles and involves 43 people. Totalling more than 140 hours of work.

Every music gig creates jobs, not only are artists feeling the pressure of music gigs declining, so are the workers behind the gigs. This also needs attention, according to Music Victoria CEO, Fiona Duncan.

“Protecting our venues means protecting musicians, employment and the creative infrastructure Victoria relies on,” she says.

To address the drop in live music venues, a Music Victoria audit recommends that the government invests in training and development to build skills and capacity for live music, as well as undertaking a more comprehensive study on the economic, social and cultural impact of live music in Victoria.

Renewed support for live music in Victoria would help support artists attempting to bring their passions to life.

“You get into it because you love the art, you love the community and stuff,” Sepulveda says. “The industry side of it is a killer. It does really impact the enjoyment.”

ARTICLE: Jasper Davis is a second-year Bachelor of Media and Communications student majoring in Journalism at La Trobe University. You can follow him on Twitter @JasperD44480.

Cover Photo: Possible Humans playing at the now closed down Reverence Hotel supplied by Scott Davis