MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It's been a rough year for nightclubs and live music venues across the country. A number of well-known clubs and concert spaces closed in 2025, from Los Angeles to the Jersey Shore. NPR's Neda Ulaby tells us why.
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NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: DJ DILA posted this set on social media from the nightclub Yolo. It's 1 of 2 clubs in San Francisco that announced it's going out of business this year. Several clubs in Brooklyn also closed. So did a legendary former movie palace in Los Angeles called the Mayan Theater. It was a beloved hot spot for salsa.
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CHUCHO VALDES: (Singing in Spanish).
ULABY: That's from a salsa competition there posted on Instagram by performer Carolina Cerisola (ph). There is talk it may reopen. In Milwaukee, a 60-year-old club called Victor's is closing this year. Clubs announced closures in Chicago, Cleveland, San Diego and Neptune, New Jersey, where the cast of the Jersey Shore once partied. And in Austin, Texas...
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ULABY: ...A club called The Coral Snake shut down not long after this band called My Nextdoor Neighbor performed there.
STEPHEN PARKER: It was a hard year.
ULABY: Stephen Parker runs the National Independent Venue Association. It represents about 1,500 U.S. clubs, concert halls, performing art centers and festivals. He says the problem is, in part, the economy. Rents keep going up. So does insurance, and people just do not go out as often as they did before COVID, and they drink less alcohol.
PARKER: Alcohol sales are how you make money.
ULABY: According to a study done by his group last year, 64% of independent venues, promoters and festivals are not profitable. Parker points to an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Justice Department that says Live Nation and Ticketmaster have monopolized the live entertainment industry. That trial is scheduled for March. Right now, Parker says real estate development is also an issue, currently squeezing popular nightclubs in Seattle, Tampa and Detroit. That's where the Leland City Club is a Goth industrial and metal mainstay.
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ULABY: That's from the club's social media. It's still planning a New Year's party.
PARKER: These spaces are the culture. These spaces are where culture happens. If these spaces don't exist, all you're left with are arenas and massive amphitheaters owned by international corporations.
ULABY: And the landscape and soundscape of American cities and towns will be, he says, in every way more empty.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARSHMELLO AND BRENT FAIYAZ SONG, "FELL IN LOVE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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