This blog is not typically known for being gentle on Resident Advisor, dance music’s self appointed answer to a question no one asked. Indeed, I’ve questioned the £750,000 bailout they got in October 2020, and I’ve queried why things like plague raves and Dominick Fernow don’t get covered on the site, to name but two.

I’ve also had plenty of questions aimed at editor-in-chief Whitney Wei – a person who has impressively managed to make the website even more boring since she took over. But today, I can begin to answer a question which I’ve pondered a few times – namely, just how bad is the financial situation at Resident Advisor?

Thanks to official records submitted to Companies House, a picture has now emerged of what the pandemic has been like for the “front left” website. And the figures don’t make for nice reading. Because as of December 31st 2019, Resident Advisor Limited made a decent profit of £26,789.

One year to the day later, this had become a gargantuan loss of £576,685. Yet despite such losses, the company was still able to pay out £65,120 in renumeration for its directors – down from £88,657 the year before. And the average number of employees on the payroll bizarrely increased – from 33 in 2019 to 35 last year.

And on the ticketing side, the figures are even more grim. Resident Advisor Tickets made a £293,489 in 2019. The pandemic resulted in the figure, as of 31st December 2020, becoming a truly eye-watering loss of £914,146. Increasingly, it’s becoming a pretty safe bet that if Arts Council England had declined to bail out Resident Advisor in 2020, the company would have most likely collapsed during 2021.

However, the statements also reveal good news. Citing the “global vaccine programme”, they now say restrictions have eased off enough in “key markets” that the business “has returned to profitable activity levels”. So if you wondered why they’re currently on a hiring spree, now you know.

But as for the figures on how they did during 2021? I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for my assessment – the figures won’t be available until early October…