In recent years, the BBC’s 6 Music Festival has been going through either an exciting metamorphosis or dying a slow death, depending on your perspective. Since kicking off in Manchester in 2014, it has largely represented a success story for the station, taking over venues in a different UK city each year and serving up line-ups replete with both emerging and established talent.
That changed in 2023, when the station indicated it would from then on be permanently based in Manchester, chiefly at the 3,500-capacity Victoria Warehouse. That location seemed valid only in the sense that it is just across the water from where much of 6’s programming is broadcast at MediaCityUK – as a venue, it is universally unloved for its poor sound and even worse sightlines.
The line-up was suddenly much sparser too, with far fewer artists than in previous years. The overall feeling was that the festival was now artificial, that it existed purely to produce content for the radio, where it dominates the station’s airwaves for the week it takes place, as well as iPlayer.
Speculation that budget cuts were behind the changes will not be dampened by this year’s festival, which finished on Saturday and left behind Victoria Warehouse for the more intimate surrounds of Band on the Wall, capacity 600, and YES’ Pink Room, which holds 250.
The station sought to frame this as a celebration of the vital importance of grassroots venues. “Every artist we love began in a small room somewhere with a sticky floor and a slightly questionable PA system,” breakfast host Nick Grimshaw told the Manchester Evening News. While the sentiment holds true, it rather mis-sold Band on the Wall in particular as a run-down staple of the toilet circuit, rather than a swish concert hall that has benefited from two separate multimillion-pound makeovers in the past 20 years.
This year’s 6 Music saw established acts playing in these intimate rooms. The likes of Bloc Party and Yard Act played their smallest shows in the city for years, neatly underlining Grimshaw’s point – they played their first three Manchester gigs at YES before going on to sell out venues ten times bigger. While the old format was not a traditional, one-ticket venue-hopping affair – shows at different venues were individually ticketed, as they are now – the buzz the festival used to generate around town as it took over the city is diminished now that it’s been scaled back.
More than ever, it feels less like a festival and more like a showcase – although at least the station uses this platform smartly. There was a sense of the new and emerging permeating things this year; even Bloc Party, ostensibly a nostalgia booking, debuted three new tracks, while Barnett’s set was dominated by an album she released just 24 hours earlier.
Courtney Barnett also played the festival, playing an album she had only released a day earlier (Photo: Shirlaine Forrest/BBC)On Wednesday, the spotlight was given over to the corporation’s music discovery thread, BBC Introducing, which put on a thrilling demonstration of the diversity and strength of the modern Manchester scene, with sets by Ellen Beth Abdi, who blends soul and synth to ingenious effect, Pyncher, one of a clutch of new bands imbuing garage rock with sounds from the weirder corners of their record collections, and headliner TTSSFU, who is one of the most exciting songwriters to emerge from the city in years, making raw, febrile music that meets at the junction of dream pop and shoegaze.
None of those artists are old enough to remember the summer of 2010, when 6 Music was earmarked for closure. Luckily, BBC bosses caved to listener backlash and chose not to axe it. But three years ago, Introducing was then hit by cutbacks while the festival was scaled back.
But this year shows how important Introducing is, in how it offers young artists a valuable pipeline to opportunities for national coverage. The range of genres that 6 Music covers across its programming means that there is room on its airwaves for both the poppy and the esoteric – something that the festival could better reflect if it took over as many venues as it used to prior to 2023.
This year’s line-up was skewed towards indie rock, particularly in its headliners, which is strange at a time when the station’s playlists are as diverse as they’ve ever been. This is hopefully not an indicator that the station is backsliding towards nostalgia; it recently announced plans to reintroduce Jarvis Cocker to its weekend line-up alongside regular contributor and Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto, when it could have chosen to promote Deb Grant or Emily Pilbeam, both young, passionate DJs who epitomise the station’s traditional drive to shine a light on new artists.
More than anything, though, what the festival needs in years to come is stronger backing from the BBC. Even in this year’s pared-back form, it proved the pontential of the new focus on the grassroots, which in itself emphasised the ongoing relevance of 6 Music as a station – it still offers a national outlet for music from beyond the mainstream, and is diverse in its outlook in doing so.
If the festival were given more venues and bigger line-ups in future, it could be as vital to artists as the radio station is, and provide listeners with more to sink their teeth into. But for that, it’ll need a budget to match its ambitions.
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