With more artists calling out the hardships of touring or taking a hiatus from the road entirely, live veterans and rising acts have spoken to NME about the reasons for this and what needs to be done.
Back in September, and just a week apart, both Frank Turner and Enter Shikari took to social media to announce that upcoming shows would be their last.
“After 28 years on the road, 10 albums and well over 3,000 shows, it’s time for a change,” wrote Turner, announcing that his four upcoming ‘Lost Evenings’ gigs at Wembley Arena would be his “last for the foreseeable future”.
As one of the UK’s most prolific live performers (and once claiming to have broken the record for the most shows played in 24 hours), the former Million Dead-turned solo star said he was looking to “recharge, spend more time with my friends and family, and explore other ways of life”. Turner noted that “the economics of touring have gotten harder, the music industry has been swallowed by social media in a way that doesn’t really interest me, and as I get older my physical and mental health could do with some care”.
Enter Shikari then announced their own indefinite hiatus, with plans to “fall dormant as a recording and performing entity” at the end of 2027. Among their reasons, including frontman Rou Reynolds’ illness brought about while making recent album ‘Lose Your Self’ and the “pressures of the modern music industry”, the four-piece spoke of the “obvious negative impact on one’s mental health” when remaining active in a touring band. “But we do this because we love it,” they added. “And we are lucky enough to have built an audience who understand that the less-trodden path is sometimes the more interesting journey.
“However, it gets to the point where the often difficult terrain of that path starts to frazzle and drain the humble traveller.”
Speaking to NME about their decision to take a step back, Reynolds admitted that it was more a case of “death by a thousand cuts” rather than being brought on by one single issue, but said that “everyone knows the kind of trajectory that the industry is on”.
“Streaming took away the income that was in physical sales (although we’ve had the odd resurgence here and there) and now touring has become a lot harder in terms of income,” he continued. “Merchandise seems to be the last bastion, but then when you get to a certain level, some venues start taking increasingly larger and disgusting cuts.
“The whole landscape just feels like it’s getting tougher, especially when you think of new bands. All the pressures on new artists must be extremely tough to deal with, along with having to do all the self-promotion and social media.”
Reynolds also found it telling that Turner would feel many of the same sentiments.
“We do know Frank, but we didn’t know he was going to make that very similar announcement,” the frontman told NME. “There are a lot of similarities between us. Frank hasn’t shied away from being quite overtly political in his life, he tours extensively and relentlessly. After a certain amount of time, you’re going to be gasping for air in whatever it is you do.
“People quite rightly go, ‘Oh, you’ve got the best job in the world’, and quite often it is, and I’m so grateful for that. But quite often the pressures of it can absolutely destroy you.”
The personal and emotional impact is as much a factor as the financial strains. Recent years have seen a number of mental health services set up to help artists and musicians through the “pressure cooker” of touring life. This year, Radiohead‘s Philip Selway, Live Nation and the Music Industry Therapy Collective (MITC) launched the Pay It Forward Fund to make specialist mental health support accessible for artists and crew on small and mid-scale tours.
Charli XCX recently responded to fans’ frustration that her ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ tour didn’t feature more dates and territories by sharing her own struggles. “I know there’s a lot of frustration in the comments about the fact that I am not doing lots of dates. I am really sorry if you feel disappointed but I have to honour my truth as an artist: touring is really emotionally and physically hard for me,” she said.
“I am not looking for sympathy and I have a huge amount of respect for artists who can handle it at an intense, lengthy and high octane level, but I am just not one of those human beings and I never have been.”
CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition David Martin described Charli’s words as “quite visceral”, spotlighting how the industry needs to remember that artists are human beings too.
“Artists need to be able to make art and deliver art,” Martin told NME. “To do that, you need the right conditions. Not everybody wants to be Ed Sheeran. It’s the individuality that creates the art. It’s good that we’re having this conversation, but we need to think about the business and financial side as well as the personal element.”
Responding to Turner and Enter Shikari’s recent announcements in light of their reputations as hard-touring artists, Martin said that the news reflected “how hard it is to be out on the road”.
“It demonstrates how difficult it is behind the supposed glamour, and how much of a personal toll it takes,” he went on. “It underlines several things we’ve been lobbying on for several years about the challenges of touring. For a hugely successful live artist to say, ‘This is really difficult for me’, that tells you a lot about how hard it is to be on the road as well as the financials of that. We love these artists, but they are people with lives, emotions and personal things to deal with. It’s far too often forgotten in the music industry that the art comes from individuals.”
Martin added: “It’s quite stark from someone like Frank Turner, when you think of the hundreds of shows he plays a year. It’s good that they’re talking about it. The positive thing is that we’re gradually reaching a point of better awareness.”
This comes after Garbage announced that they’d be adopting a “different model” of touring, sharing that recent European dates and stops in certain UK and North American cities could be the last time they play there. Among their reasons were perplexing costs, along with the “thievery of the record industry” making it “very, very difficult” to tour. Frontwoman Shirley Manson expressed her fears for future generations of artists, too. “Young people deserve our protection and to be able to make a living from their creativity,” she previously told NME. “It’s a real state of emergency for musicians of a certain ilk.”
She added: “I’m not saying this for myself, I am golden. I’m saying this as an elder in an industry that is punishing young people.”
One such rising act to face these challenges is YouTuber-turned-rising pop-punk star Noahfinnce, who said more established artists pulling away from touring was “indicative of an industry-wide problem”.
“I’m lucky in that before I started touring, I had YouTube and social media stuff to fund it,” he told NME, just hours before hopping on a bus for his first full UK tour in support of upcoming album ‘Wonky’. “I struggled as someone who essentially had a separate job outside of this to fund it, so how the hell is anyone who doesn’t have that surviving?”
Noahfinnce, real name Noah Finn Adams, is one of the lucky recipients of the FAC’s UKAT funding – a “seriously game-changing” pot of money via the Live Trust’s levy of ticket money from arena gigs. The cash was donated by the likes of Wolf Alice, Radiohead, Lorde and Harry Styles, with the aim of getting artists who can’t afford to tour back out on the road. Before the funding, Adams said he couldn’t imagine a future as a touring artist.
“Because I’m autistic, I get incredibly burnt out,” he shared. “Over the past few years, that’s what’s been happening. I’ll write an album and take time off from touring because I can’t afford it at all, but also because I’m just so tired.
“Before a tour, I’d work my ass off to try and get people excited for it and to fund it, but after that there’s always the thought, ‘Oh, what if that was my last tour?’ I’m so exhausted from doing it that if I’m not able to keep up with my work that funds the next one, then it creates this circle and cycle for this constant state of stress and anxiety.”
Adams said that conversations about massive debt accrued from playing live were becoming more common among his peers. “What comes with not being able to afford to tour is the shame that somehow you’ve made a mistake, and this has brought together a lot of artists who wouldn’t normally talk about it,” he admitted. “I don’t know a single friend that does this and doesn’t worry about spending money. Even with bigger artists, everyone has just got used to the fact that it’s becoming more impossible to do the part of the job that is probably the most important.
“You can write a song, produce it, record it, release it and see the numbers go up, but as somebody who grew up going to shows and meeting some of my best friends there, it’s just really a shame that live music as a whole is slowly disappearing.”
Musicians are currently facing a perfect storm. Last year, it was announced that 84 per cent of UK independent artists couldn’t afford to tour while more than half of UK venues made no profit, with more than 6,000 jobs lost. Research showed that 1.5million young people across the country had given up on their ambitions of pursuing a career in music.
As well as the ever-rising cost of living, the ongoing impact of Brexit on artists’ ability to tour and make money overseas – with even the likes of Jamie T unable to afford to play Europe – there’s the UK suffering from the “complete collapse of touring” due to venue closures. The latter has left around 35million people without live music in their area or community. Ultimately, Adams argued that artists are met with “a clusterfuck” of hurdles ahead of them being able to play live at full scale.
“Who it’s hurting the most is the artists who just want to get their music out there,” he argued. “A decade ago, people who didn’t live near major cities could have just gone along, picked up a ticket on the door, enjoyed it, met the artist, changed their lives.”
He continued: “Then there’s how much tickets cost. I’m not Taylor Swift and I’m not charging £300 per show, but in general everything is getting more expensive. I genuinely feel that a lot of people see going to shows as a luxury. Growing up, I would go and see bands for a tenner. The cost of living is insane right now, but there are also these unfair agreements for artists.”
Imagining a better future, Adams said he hoped that the UK government might adopt similar ideas to Ireland, such as youngsters receiving vouchers to attend shows and creatives receiving a basic income.
“Maybe they could also reserve some of the tickets for people on a lower income?” he suggested. “Artists would worry much less that the people who want to come to their shows can’t afford it. In general, we need to put more emphasis on the fact that music is such an important part of our world. We’ve taken that for granted, and now it’s becoming less accessible.”
Enter Shikari’s Rou Reynolds said more could also be learned from the likes of Scandinavia and Germany, and how they support contemporary music – rather than the UK government’s history of giving more funding to theatre, opera and ballet.
“Often a lot of the money from a lot of these government funds just gets funnelled to the ‘high arts’,” explained Reynolds. “It’s one of the things we’ve been talking about since day one: support for youth clubs and venues that are struggling.”
As well as the FAC “reinvesting from the top of the pyramid into the grassroots and the niche scenes of the UK”, the Music Venue Trust (MVT) has also been distributing levy cash from the Live Trust. So far, MVT has distributed £500,000 to the grassroots to keep venues afloat and reverse the trend of closure. It is hoped that if more of the ticketing giants and live music companies contribute to the levy at the full scale that was originally imagined, the grassroots of venues and artists can be supported in the longterm like the Premier League does with football. Meanwhile, Music Venue Properties has been buying the buildings to create a ‘National Trust’ of venues protected from landlords raising rent.
“These are things that are about so much more than music; they’re absolute bastions of community where every form of indiscriminate community has been slashed over the years of Tory austerity,” added Reynolds. “It’s a no-brainer that these are the places that need to be supported, especially if Britain wants to remain an absolutely outstanding fountain of artistry and creativity and everything that it’s been for decades; you’re going to need to support the new blood coming up.”
While calling for more funding and attention to protect independent creativity, Reynolds optimistically told NME that he felt “a resurgence of communal creative spaces” and “a return of a physical unifying magnetism” was “inevitable”.
“There have been glimmers of this through an absolute backlash of people just sitting on TikTok and trying to discover music, with all the breadth of the wonderful things that music gives you lost while completely alone just staring at a screen,” he added. “That is not a real and truly needed human experience. That’s not how we work. We are completely social creatures. Pro-sociality is our absolute superpower, and that’s how humans took over the whole planet.
“I do see a backlash and a return where it’ll be local bands, artists, DJs, producers starting off in little scenes again, then it just becomes bigger and bigger. That natural way of growth will return.”
Enter Shikari are currently in the midst of a European tour which arrives in the UK on Friday November 13. Visit here for tickets and more information.
‘Wonky’ by Noahfinnce is out now.
