In 2021 at the height of the British government’s self-made Brexit mess, a campaign called #LetTheMusicMove launched in the UK to highlight the impact on touring musicians.
More than 200 artists backed its efforts to tackle the new red tape and costs for British artists touring the EU, and European artists touring the UK.
Two years on, the campaign is expanding to a new frontier, the US, although here it’s not Brexit that is giving musicians headaches.
The problem there is changes to US visa rules that, according to the campaign’s organisers the MMF and FAC, would increase artist visa costs by more than 250% to more than $1,600 per petition.
These new rules are proposals for now, with a comment period for public feedback (albeit from US citizens only) open until 6 March.
Thus the expanded campaign is encouraging artists to get their US booking agents and other partners to submit feedback, while also collecting non-US views via this questionnaire, which will be used to nudge the British government to lobby the US to row back on the changes.
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