The Great Escape‘s (TGE) Adam Ryan and Francine Gorman have hailed the resurgence in guitar music as the UK music business conference expands its live music programme to four days for the first time.

The Brighton showcase festival, which runs from 14-17 May, will feature more than 550 up-and-coming acts across the duration of the event, including a full Wednesday schedule.

Performances will take place in more than 30 intimate venues across the city – the highest number in the festival’s history.

“The demand for showcasing at The Great Escape is always really high, and to be able to give artists an additional day to showcase to industry is very helpful,” Ryan tells IQ. “We’ve always perceived ourselves as a four-day festival because the wristband exchange opens on the Wednesday and a lot of our international delegates arrive then, so we  thought it makes more sense to make more of a day of it.”

Stage hosts include media partners BBC Introducing, Billboard UK, Clash, DIY, Dork, Notion, So Young, The Independent, Ticketmaster New Music, Upset, brands including Download Festival, live agencies WME and ATC Live, and independent labels FatCat Records, Moshi Moshi, Nice Swan Records, Bella Union and PIAS.

Ryan says the festival receives 12,000-15,000 applications from emerging acts every year, from which around 500 are selected to perform.

“We’re always at the 500 mark,” he says. “I don’t think you’d want to go far over that. That’s a big enough number to make enough noise and focus on everything that we want to, without distracting or taking away from the ability to market the event.”

“There’s so much great guitar music at the moment”

First held in 2006, TGE has helped kickstart the careers of acts such as Adele, Ed Sheeran, Stormzy, Sam Fender, Charli XCX, Skepta, Dave, and Sleep Token – as well as spotlighting artists from over 40 countries each year.

In a twist for 2025, the Live Nation-backed/MAMA-operated festival will shine a light on rising stars from its host city such as Ava McKechnie, Rubii, Lonnie Gunn, James Marriott, George Bloomfield, CLT DRP, Bones Ate Arfa and Goetia.

Also joining the bill are Badger, Big Long Sun, Bighead Tea Drinkers, Chitchat, CURRLS, Ellis. D, Frances Mistry, Goodbye, Holiday Ghosts, HotWax (pictured), Ideal Living, Jordi Alkema, Ladylike, Polite Bureaux, Route 500, Slag, The New Eves, Van Zon, VOWER and Welly, among others.

This year’s lineup also includes Spotlight Shows from Skunk Anansie, Peter Doherty and Rizzle Kicks.

“There’s so much great guitar music at the moment,” says Ryan. “We seem to have a lot more indie this year. We have the most amount of Brighton artists that have ever performed on the event as well, so a real focus for us is to provide the opportunity to platform and showcase them locally.

“We’re working with a lot of local councils this year, so Greater Manchester has got a showcase. Hull has a showcase. Launchpad Yorkshire has a showcase. So it’s also about supporting UK grassroots talent as well, which we’re doing more of this year, and we also have showcases with BIMM and Roundhouse Rising to support grassroots.”

He adds: “The mission is always the same: to support the new artists and the ecosystem around them. But maybe there’s more of a focus this year on UK artists and definitely Brighton artists.”

“Last year, we changed around the format of the conference to have an industry collaborator per day”

The full schedule is also now available for its conference strand, with newly announced sessions including The Money Trench podcast with Mark Sutherland in conversation with Believe’s Romain Vivien and Alice McLean. In addition MPs Alex Sobel and Anneliese Midgley will review recent debates and discuss how the music industry can ensure its voice is heard within Parliament, while Red Bull Records will present a discussion entitled Tapped In: The Power of Short-Form Content for Artists on the Rise.

They join previously announced speakers such as Skunk Anansie’s Skin, Rizzle Kicks’ Jordan Stephens and Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde.

“Last year, we changed around the format of the conference to have an industry collaborator per day,” says TGE conference coordinator Francine Gorman. “We’re working this year with the Council of Music Makers, AIM and the Night Time Industries Association. They help us set the agenda and identify what key topics the industry is concerned about or would like to discuss on a public platform.

“We’re also retaining our educational aspect – on Saturday, we have Youth Music, BBC Introducing and AudioActive working with us to pull the content together. It’s a really interesting way of producing a conference because you have a lot of different influences and ideas coming in from the get-go. It helps us to have a broad reach into the industry and make sure that we’re representing a lot of voices.”

The revised conference format also includes making artists’ voices at the centre of the conversations.

“There are often instances in conferences where everybody’s on stage talking about the artist except the artist,” says Gorman. “So we have Skin from Skunk Anansie and Jordan Stephens from Rizzle Kicks coming in as keynotes to chat about their careers and share their thoughts and considerations around the industry and its current state and format.

“We’ll also have conversations with artists surrounded by their team members, and we’ll talk about how they work together and the spirit of collaboration and how it can best work.”

“Supporting emerging talent is essential to keeping the future of music strong”

Live Nation UK & Ireland chair Denis Desmond says: “Supporting emerging talent is essential to keeping the future of music strong.”

“We recognise how important it is to give emerging artists the platforms they need to grow – which is why we’ve doubled our investment in new talent since 2018.”

Beyond The Great Escape, shows in venues under 1,500-capacity account for 70% of LN’s UK and Ireland events over the last 10 years, totalling more than 19,000 performances since 2014.

Rory Bett, CEO of MAMA Festivals and VIP Nation, adds: “The Great Escape is an incredible festival to be a part of – it’s an event that’s helped shape the voices of tomorrow. Everyone loves finding their next favourite artist, and this is the place to do it.”

TGE has also confirmed the return of the Steve Strange Award, in memory of the legendary agent, with the recipient receiving a £5,000 cash prize.

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The Great Escape‘s head of music Adam Ryan has previewed tomorrow’s return of the UK showcase festival and convention in an interview with IQ.

The event, which is operated by Live Nation’s MAMA, will feature over 500 artists from around the world – more than even the BBC Proms – at 35-plus venues across Brighton from 10-13 May.

Spotlight shows will be headlined by Unknown T at Concorde 2 (presented by UTA), Maisie Peters (presented by TGE) and Arlo Parks (presented by Rolling Stone UK), both at Brighton Dome, while stage hosts will include Amazon Music, TikTok, the Royal Albert Hall, Speedy Wunderground and Transgressive.

Ryan says the festival’s mission remains to “showcase the best new artists from around the globe”.

“It’s important that we are helping export offices and the showcase artists from their country,” he tells IQ. “But at its core it is music discovery so we will focus on new and emerging talent and that is always the remit.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever increase the number of artists – 500 is a lot, but it still helps us have cut through”

Leading music talent agencies will be hosting showcases throughout the festival. WME’s showcase will kick off the TGE Beach Stage on Thursday 11 May featuring Hot Wax, Maeve, Saint Harison, May and Future Utopia. ATC Live’s line-up takes over Komedia Basement the same day with Sam Akpro, Billie Marten, Willie J Healey, Blondshell, Enumclaw and Deadletter.

+44 from Amazon Music will also be showcasing an evening of Black music artists with +44 Live presents TGE Beach on the Amazon Music Stage on Saturday 13 May. The line-up will be headlined by K-Trap, who will be joined by AntsLive, Miss LaFamilia,Zakhar and Shae Universe.

“We try to showcase as many genres within the limitation of the venues that we have. The key is to align with credible partners to make sure that we’re doing those genres justice,” explains Ryan.

“I don’t think we’ll ever increase the number of artists – 500 is a lot, but it still helps us have cut through in terms of the artists not being lost. We have about 5,000 delegates from around the globe attend each year and we’d like to expand that; we’d definitely like to try and get that as diverse as possible and be a leading force in diversifying and making the music industry more of a representation of society.

“We’d like to sell more tickets, obviously, because we’re a business, But it’s trying to do it in the in the right way that’s going to enhance The Great Escape and also enhance the music industry going forward.”

“There’s nothing that will ever replicate the feeling of being in a room watching somebody perform”

Ryan also offers his thoughts on the question marks regarding the health of the UK music scene’s talent pipeline.

“I hate that phrase – talent pipeline – but I understand that it’s a business and that’s why we refer to it like that,” he says. “I just find it a bit crude to people’s art that [it’s referred to] as going into a pipeline. But I find it interesting that the speed at which artists can get local, national or global recognition before they even have a live show.

“With TikTok, you could have a 20-second clip of one song generate 30/40/50 million streams, but the live show hasn’t even been thought about and there’s barely 15 minutes, let alone half an hour, to even one live performance. So I think that will have a knock on effect in terms of what can grow through to larger festival stages, but there’s always going to be an abundance of exciting artists making original music and doing it the old fashioned way of touring and playing live, because that just can’t be beaten. There’s nothing that will ever replicate the feeling of being in a room watching somebody perform.”

Italy is the festival’s lead country partner for 2023, and will host two special Italian showcases, titled La Festa, coordinated by Italia Music Export. Anna Bassy, San Soucis, and Maria Chiara Argiro will take to the stage at Patterns Upstairs on 11 May, and The Gluts, Milanosport, BLUEM, and Eugenia Post Meridiem will perform at Three Wise Cats on 12 May.

“It has been tough, but we’ve got there and we’re really, really happy with the line-up”

This year’s TGE conference programme, meanwhile, includes three full day strands curated by CMU – Music+Education (10 May), Music+Deals (11 May) and Music + The Creator Economy (12 May).

“For us, it’s important to have three topics and spend the day drilling into those topics and then hopefully, we can have a conclusion and make a change,” says Ryan.

Keynote speakers include Ticketmaster’s EVP of global music David Marcus, who will discuss the latest trends, innovations and opportunities in the live music and ticketing sector, and Afro Nation co-founder SMADE, who will tell the story of the festival’s creation and development. BPI and Youth Music chair Yolanda Brown, and songwriter, producer and PRS Members’ Council president Michelle Escoffery will also deliver keynotes.

In closing, Ryan adds that planning this year’s festival has not been without its challenges.

“Brighton is a fantastic place with lots of venues and all in walkable distance,” he says. “But with the current economic crisis and standards of living, and rents and rates going up, a lot of the venues have changed hands or changed names more so than previous years, or closed altogether. And it’s difficult to plan the footprint of the festival in November if a venue’s in limbo.

“Production costs have gone up, artists fees have gone up and it’s difficult for us because we’re not a greenfield site so it’s not just a matter of us selling a couple more thousand tickets – we’re limited to the venues that are in Brighton. So it has been tough, but we’ve got there and we’re really, really happy with the line-up and how we’re engaging with Brighton and representing new music in the city.”

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