This year’s Reading and Leeds festival lineups are a testament to the catholic tastes of a generation who have little regard for musical tribalism or the concept of genre: brash pop stars rub up against drum’n’bass acts, underground rappers, meat-and-potatoes indie bands and much more.
What at least 70% of those acts have in common, however, is that early on in their careers they were supported by the BBC’s Introducing scheme, a combination of regional and national radio shows playing music submitted by unsigned artists and festival stages that platform them. For almost 20 years, a BBC Introducing stage has been a core part of Reading and Leeds – until it was scrapped last month.
“It’s a loss,” says Juliette Jackson, of the Mercury-nominated indie band the Big Moon, who played the stage in 2015, a year after forming. “It was a really big deal to play that as a new band with no money. It’s huge when you’re starting out – it gives you an opportunity and puts you on a platform.”
Over the years, major British artists including Ed Sheeran, Charli xcx, the 1975 and Sam Fender started their careers with support from the initiative, which has few of the barriers to entry of the traditional music industry. Regional DJs suggest local acts for festival slots, with final decisions made by a wider BBC team.
Reading and Leeds organisers Festival Republic did not respond to detailed questions from the Guardian about why it had pulled the plug on an unsuspecting BBC, who were already planning their 2026 lineup. It has been replaced by the Canopy stage, billed as a “home for new and breaking acts”. In a public statement, Festival Republic claimed it offers greater opportunity: “Previously, only artists who had been selected by the BBC were qualified to play the Introducing Stage – now, we are able to open up this important platform to a much wider pool of emerging talent and book any new music artist for the stage.”
But that so-called “wider pool” has come under scrutiny. Fans have been highlighting the connections behind many of the acts booked for the stage, such as Violet Grohl (daughter of Dave Grohl), Cruz Beckham (son of Victoria and David) and Villanelle frontman Gene Gallagher (son of Liam). The boyband December 10 are already signed to a label after they formed on Simon Cowell’s Netflix series The Next Act.
It has led some to nickname the Canopy “the nepo baby stage”, and prompted coverage in Private Eye. In an Instagram post, music industry commentator the Secret DJ decried “nepotism and the rising use of famous names over new talent [that] is rapidly destroying the arts”.
In a general statement provided to the Guardian, Festival Republic said their booking policy for the stage is “open to emerging artists from all backgrounds and at different stages of development. Artists may be independent or signed and may have come through a variety of routes into the industry.”
BBC Introducing editor Kelly Betts told the Guardian: “We will miss being at Reading and Leeds for this year. Programming decisions for that stage are made by the festival organisers, so it’s not really for me to comment on how they choose to curate it.”
Jason Carter, who founded BBC Introducing in 2007 and was responsible for forging the relationships with festivals to put on live events, said he was “disappointed to hear [the news] and sad to see it no longer there” but that he “can see both sides”, adding that the industry has changed and “there’s a lot more ways today to access new music that the festival probably wants the opportunity to feed off”.
Ex-BBC Introducing presenter Tom Robinson said that while “the beauty of BBC introducing was that you needed no inside access”, it could still occasionally be an “arcane” process. It was also not immune from someone in the industry “having a whisper in the ear of somebody, and an act that a record company was supporting would mysteriously appear on the BBC Introducing stage. But on the whole, it worked, and it was great.”
But with Glastonbury having a fallow year this year – and with it their BBC Introducing stage – it’s an extra blow for young artists. “Reading and Leeds is a big moment in our calendar,” says Jess Iszatt, who hosts BBC Radio 1’s Introducing show. “Because it’s got such a young audience, it’s a really important one, and it means there’s less opportunity for the artists that we share each week on the show. It’s really sad and it feels like the end of an era.”
BBC Introducing is far from finished – it has just announced a full month of live events in 10 cities across the country in November, has recently expanded into the US, and continues to host stages at other festivals. But the sole grassroots pipeline to a major UK event has now been closed off. “When we talk about the successes of it, it [the decision] doesn’t make sense to me,” says Iszatt.
As for accusations of the new model favouring already well-established artists, Robinson prefers to see this as an opportunity rather than a threat. “Let the nepo babies go and do their nepo baby thing. If they make shit music, it’ll still be shit music. If they make great music, they deserve to succeed, but let’s not worry about them.”
Instead, he thinks it’s time to go back to celebrating the core purpose of Introducing. “At a time when we’re getting shat on from a great height by multinational streaming giants, I think the grassroots is the future,” he says. “And I’m hopeful that Introducing will carry on supporting gobsmacking talent and helping them find a wider audience.”
“I don’t know how they’ve booked their stage,” Iszatt says of Reading and Leeds’ Canopy offering, “but I do know how we book ours. And that would have been committing to supporting artists regardless of their means and wanting to make sure that it would be diverse in every aspect. Because that’s fair.”
