Tinnitus UK Attends House of Lords

Turning evidence into action: Tinnitus Week 2026 report launch

We kicked off Tinnitus Week 2026 with the launch of our new report: Amplifying Awareness.

The report was created following extensive surveying carried out over the summer, centering around live music and tinnitus. We gathered insights from a variety of sectors within the music industry, ranging from industry professionals, gigging artists to music fans and festival goers to help us shape an industry wide campaign on hearing health and safer listening within the music industry to ensure live music doesn’t cost people their hearing or wellbeing.

We attended the House of Lords to mark the launch of the report, Joined by our sponsors, with talks from Diarmuid Flavin from Neuromod, Jono Heale of ACS and Gordon Harrison from Specsavers.

Report authors Anne Savage and Sonja Jones took the stage to discuss the report, going over findings from the extensive surveying, these findings include:

• Consumers in the UK spend £6.68 billion on live music.
• Hearing damage linked to live music is preventable, but it is placing avoidable pressure on the NHS.
• 92% of fans experience tinnitus after live music events.
• Nearly 1 in 5 people now live with permanent hearing loss.

Following these findings, Tinnitus UK is calling for:

1. For Venues: Make venues safer for staff and audiences by clearly following appropriate hearing safety guidance, and by providing practical toolkits, guidelines, and training for venue operators.
2. For live music professionals: Demand safe working conditions, including appropriate hearing protection, noise monitoring, and training; hearing loss should never be part of the job.
3. For All: Normalise hearing protection at live music. Wearing earplugs should be as routine as wearing seatbelts; driven by public-health campaigns and visible leadership from artists, DJs, and influencers.
4. For Government: Set clear, enforceable standards on sound levels, hearing protection, and training, ensuring they are monitored and enforced to protect workers and audiences alike.

From awareness to action – What’s next? 

The report does not call for silence, bans, or heavy-handed regulations. Instead, it calls for responsibility, consistency, and collaboration.

Live music is one of the UK’s greatest cultural strengths. Protecting hearing is not about turning the volume off, it is about making sure people can keep enjoying music for a lifetime.

That’s why we are the next step is launching the Live Music Hearing Health Pledge.

Why a pledge?

One of the clearest findings from the report is that no single part of the system can fix this alone.

Promoters, venues, artists, sound engineers, health bodies, researchers, regulators and campaigners all have a role to play. Right now, good practice exists, but it is patchy and inconsistent. Some events actively promote hearing protection and manage sound well – others do very little.

The result is a postcode lottery for your ears.

The Live Music Hearing Health Alliance Pledge, led by Tinnitus UK, is designed to change that by creating a shared foundation for action.

It brings together organisations across hearing health, music, public safety and policy around five simple but powerful commitments:

• Collaborate rather than work in silos
• Act on robust scientific evidence
• Speak with a coordinated voice to decision-makers
• Prioritise prevention, not just treatment
• Have the people with lived experience of people affected at the heart of what we do

This is not a vague statement of intent. It is a practical commitment to work together, set measurable goals, and build consistent standards for safer listening.

Protecting the future of live music

At its heart, this is about sustainability.

A sustainable live music sector is not only financially and culturally healthy, it is healthy for the people who create it, work in it and love it. Hearing health must sit alongside crowd safety, fire safety and structural safety as a basic responsibility, not an optional extra.

By committing to shared standards, shared learning and shared advocacy, signatories to the pledge are saying something simple but profound:

Lifelong hearing damage and tinnitus should not be the price of participation in live music.

If we act together now, we can ensure that the next generation grows up with both unforgettable gigs and healthy hearing.

That is why this pledge matters, and why this launch is only the beginning.

Tinnitus UK would like to thank all of the attendees and sponsors for joining us at the House of Lords, and for helping us to raise awareness on hearing safety within the music industry. If you would like to read the report, click below.