According to the state government's restrictions for the seventh lockdown in regional Victoria, performances cannot be streamed from a venue that is not a home as it does not come under the five reasons to leave home.

However, the rule came as a shock to some venues that had been providing streams to its customers and the wider community since the pandemic began in March 2020.

Piano Bar has performed more than 300 live streams in the past 18 months, with many done free for the community and reaching up to 10,000 views.

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Owner Andy Pobjoy said he was surprised to have to cancel his streaming plans.

"We've been doing so much live streaming and to find out that we're now not able to do that under the current guidelines came as a real shock," he said.

"We've had to rearrange the schedule and we've had to apologise to a few people and take our public live streams off-air."

Mr Pobjoy said the streams were a way for the business to maintain its connection with its loyal customer base.

"A lot of people have a good social network that they've built up through Piano Bar, a lot of people that live on their own that are very isolated during these lockdowns, so it's just been something that we started doing and kept doing ever since," he said.

"There have been a lot of people that have been having watch parties on Facebook where they've been getting a few friends together and putting the live stream on, messaging on one device and watching on the television."

The streams are also important to performers, who rely on them for income, exposure and practice while they are unable to perform in front of live audiences.

Mr Pobjoy said he, like many performers, was frustrated by not being able to perform throughout numerous lockdowns.

"We do spend a lot of time practising and getting our skills up to scratch and then to not have any outlet or avenue to perform has been pretty tough," he said.

"Psychologically, I know it's been really hard on a few of our singers. One of them from Colac is a single mum and she's looking after the kids all day and just to be able to come and do a live stream every fortnight or whatever has been incredible."

Mr Pobjoy said there was little risk in streaming performances from his venues with no audience.

"We don't have a production crew, I can control everything myself in terms of the cameras and all the switching and the streaming stuff so it's usually just two or three of us in there performing. We don't have an audience in the room, obviously... We're doing all the right things," he said.

Commerce Ballarat and the Victorian Regional Chamber Alliance released a statement on Tuesday calling for the same rules to apply to live music venues as they do to religious services.

Commerce Ballarat chief executive Jodie Gillett said the ban was another hit to an already damaged industry.

"For those venues and for those musicians, it's a way of keeping their business alive. There are other businesses who are able to do that," she said. "Religious organisations can stream live from their church. The government has put strict rules and regulations around that. What we're asking for is for the same thing to be done with music venues."

The Department of Health did not respond to The Courier's request for comment.

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