A new report on London's nightlife says the city's music licensing system treats some genres — and the audiences who follow them — as risks to be managed. Genres including Afrobeats, hip-hop and R&B are routinely flagged as high risk in licensing processes, the report finds, in coverage reported by BBC News on October 14.
The finding lands in a long-running argument about how London venues are regulated. Promoters of Black music genres have for years said that risk assessments, police input and licence conditions fall more heavily on their events than on comparable nights playing other styles, raising the cost and difficulty of putting on shows in the capital.
Licensing is where culture meets paperwork: a venue's licence, and the conditions attached to it, decide what can be played, how late, and with what security. If the assessment of risk tracks genre — and, by extension, the ethnicity of the crowd a genre draws — then the system shapes which music London gets to hear live.
Expect the report to feed into the wider debate about the health of the capital's grassroots venues, which have been closing under pressure from costs, development and regulation. For promoters in the genres named, the ask is straightforward: judge events on their management and record, not on the label on the poster.
