Bangor music venue The Goat's Toe wins £10,000 PRS for Music prize

The recovery-focussed nationwide competition is aimed at helping venues remain at the heart of the community

PRS for Music, the UK-headquartered organisation that represents the rights of over 160,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers around the world, announces Bangor’s The Goat’s Toe as the winner of its Back to Live Music Venue Prize of £10,000 for the Northern Ireland region.

The recovery-focussed nationwide competition was launched by PRS for Music to give independent live music venues across the UK the chance to win one of six regional prizes of up to £10,000 and inject much-needed financial support into venues who are dedicated to improving live music experiences in their local communities. So far, Chesterfield’s The County Music Bar (Midlands and North of England region), Carmarthen’s CWRW (pronounced koo-roo, for the Welsh region) and Paisely’s The Bungalow (Scotland region) have been announced as winners of the prize, alongside today’s venue winner for Northern Ireland, The Goat’s Toe.

The Goat’s Toe has a reputation for promoting live, original music from Bangor’s home-grown talent pool and hopes to entice bigger bands and support more varied genres of music over the coming year. It is also keen to host more festivals within the region and is planning venue upgrades to the stage, PA sound system and backline for touring artists. Expanding their in-house system will allow the shows to be viewed from the beer garden.

The Goat’s Toe manager, Mark Ennis and Amanda Whittaker, marketing manager, Wolf Inns, will also use the £10,000 PRS for Music Back to Live Music Venue Prize to host more original music competitions, whilst investing money into a marketing and social media campaign to help promote events.

The Goat’s Toe is thrilled to be awarded the PRS for Music Back To Live Prize. The venue has come on leaps and bounds since it opened its doors in 2011, with a focus on live music. The Goat will continue to support and showcase original, up-and-coming, and established musicians across the board. With the much appreciated support from PRS, we will grow and expand our ideas and our facility. We are excited to see where the journey takes us. Bangor as a city has a lot to offer, may we continue to shine!

 

Venues that promote up and coming talent like The Goat’s Toe are vitally important to the health and growth of music in the UK. The Back to Live Music Venue Prize has emerged as a catalyst to support the teams behind local venues who play a real part in developing talent across the UK.

 

I’m very impressed with The Goat’s Toe and the talent it supports in the UK. Their enthusiasm and support for emerging talent is exactly what the UK music scene needs as it recovers from the pandemic. We wish the team there many more years success in enabling fresh talent to follow their musical dreams.

The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the live music sector has been well-documented; between 2019 and 2021, PRS for Music saw an 84% decline in the number of live performance setlists reported to the organisation, falling from 124,000 in 2019, to 19,300 in 2021.

PRS for Music’s Back to Live Music Venue Prize competition launched in March 2022 as the organisation’s direct response to the devastating effects of the global pandemic on live music venues in the UK. Open to independent live music venues who are not part of a national brand whose offering included music prior to pandemic closures, winning venues were determined by a judging panel made up of leading representatives from across the music, arts, and hospitality sectors. The final two UK regional Back to Live Music Venue Prize winners will be announced next month.  

About PRS for Music

Here for music since 1914, PRS for Music is a world-leading music collective management organisation representing the rights of more than 175,000 talented songwriters, composers and music publishers. Redefining the global standard for music royalties, PRS for Music ensures songwriters and composers are paid whenever their musical compositions and songs are streamed, downloaded, broadcast, performed and played in public. 

For 110 years it has grown and protected the rights of the music creator community, paying out royalties with more accuracy, transparency and speed. In 2023, PRS for Music paid out £943.6m in royalties and collected a record £1.08 billion in revenues. prsformusic.com