It has been announced that Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi will be live streaming a performance this week in support of grassroots music venues hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. This comes with the announcement that this year’s Amazon Prime Day Live will be held as an online event. Amazon Prime day Live will be available to stream this Friday and donations can be made throughout to support the Music Venue Trust.
Other artists performing for Amazon Prime Day Live include, according to The Scotsman, ‘Amazon Music Ones To Watch 2020 artist Celeste, and Welsh artist and producer Cate Le Bon.’ Who will be broadcasting their performances from small music venues in their native England and Wales, while Capaldi will be recording his set in Scotland.
Winner of two Brit Awards, Capaldi’s presence at the event will bring much needed status and attention to the event, which can be streamed by tuning into Amazon Music UK on Twitch or using the Amazon Music app. Pocket-lint reports Amazon’s statement that performances for the event will be recorded in a ‘small independent music venue across the UK that is under threat of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic,’ to an audience watching online and remotely.
The singer, whose debut album ‘Divinely Uninspired To A Heavenly Extent,’ has been reported by NME as being ‘the UK’s most popular album of 2020 so far,’ has already scored two UK number 1 singles and a number 1 album. His first number 1, ‘Someone You Loved,’ was released on the 22nd of November 2018 and his second, ‘Before You Go,’ a year later on the 28th November 2019. Lewis Capaldi has swiftly become one of the biggest names of the late teens and there is hope that his prestige will be enough to inspire the public generosity required to keep live music from its knees.
Speaking to NME, Music Venue Trust founder Mark Davyd said that ‘Amazon Music was one of the first donors for our COVID-19 Crisis fund,‘ which was made necessary by the closure of venues and the ongoing restrictions which make live music financially unviable for the majority of venues. Capaldi’s performance at Amazon Prime Day will raise funds and awareness which could help save the live music industry.
As stated in Udiscovermusic, ‘two thirds of the UK’s grassroots venues,’ are ‘unable to go ahead with socially distanced gigs,‘ and are many are fighting to avoid closure altogether. While the industry has made a number of requests for greater government support, Rishi Sunak today shocked musicians across the country by appearing to suggest that ‘struggling musicians and other arts workers should retrain and get a new job,’ as reported by Classic FM. It is, therefore, no huge surprise to find grassroots music venues placing their hopes in big corporations like Amazon which may appreciate the billions of pounds brought in every year by the UK events industry.
