Bloomberg Covers The Music Industry's Lost Summer
Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 09:27AM
"Summer is the most lucrative time of year for the concert business, as promoters stage festivals all across the nation and host large outdoor shows at stadiums and amphitheaters. The industry stands to miss out on more than $5 billion in ticket sales if there are no shows all summer, according to Pollstar, an industry trade publication. That doesn’t include the lost revenue from advertising, merchandise, and food and beverages.
The ultimate damage is likely to be much worse, and long-lasting. The concert industry stands to remain closed longer than restaurants or movie theaters, which can open with reduced capacity. Sports leagues, meanwhile, make most of their money from media deals with TV networks, and have debated playing games in front of empty stadiums. But concerts depend on large numbers of people gathering in close proximity, the very circumstance in which the coronavirus is most likely to spread.
Government officials in Los Angeles and Illinois have warned there may be no events this year, a view held by many agents and managers. One top industry executive predicted the concert business would take three years to make what it normally does in one."
Read the rest of the article below. A pretty eye-opening read on the state of the industry.
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Reader Comments (5)
[Now let me hijack this for a bit . . .and I know all of you love when I do that.]
And I get it. People end up doing it because it feels normal. And we all want normal right now. Thing is, it is also the case that people are now turning the absence of evidence into evidence (see also below). My meaning? "Look, the deaths are a lot lower than they said! This is a scam! I am going to drive around my capitol building to demand my right to assemble wherever I want." Um, no. That isn't how it works. That means that things _are_ flattening, that the curve is lower. Which is in some sense a version of what I decried above (See? I know how this works). But projections are based on models. When those models shift, so too do the projections. More distancing = less deaths. More distancing does not mean a conspiracy to stop hugs.
Here, though, is where I agree with those car-honking geniuses: if this ends up being a lot less damaging than the flu, great. Sign me up. And thank you to those who helped make sure it ended up that way . . . with an extra dose of gratitude to those who had to deal with this absent supplies and support and really weren't thinking about your novel interpretations of Constitutional Law while they watched people gasp for air and then die. Funny that people take revised projections as a sign of a conspiracy, not as a sign of hope.
But that isn't time to host fondue parties in phone booths (not that you could find them anymore). Nor is it time to show up at Uncle Funny's House of Muzak to see your favorite band with a lot of people you never met (and I am sure many of them are super cool and totally into rocking out, in an enclosed space, with a mask on and tons of sanitizer in their pockets). And I say all of that while truly grieving for those who work at clubs, stadiums, and arenas. I want to see them again too (perhaps not the grabby bouncer).
You want normal? I do too. But you have to do things differently to get back to something approximating that. Your tan or need for disc golf aren't really that important in my book. What is? Making small changes to my life so that other people can get back to living the way they did a few months ago. And, even with my small changes, it is going to take a lot of other steps to get back to that point.
So why prolong the suffering? Oh, because Florida has nice beaches and some pastors (some of whom, sadly, are now dead) believe their sanctums have an 'inner' that protects against viruses. Sure, Totally get it. Forget my comments. I am about to get in my car so I can do loopty-loops around a building no one is in so as to prove that my rage is equal to a stranger's right to ask others to help them stay safe. Fair trade. I never met your grandma. What do I care?
Here it is, man, plain and simple ... We as a nation (by that I mean, The Great Unmasked and the even more great people who have the common decency and respect for their fellow man to wear one) need to be aware of the real and present danger we have put ourselves in by flouting common sense.
Now is the time to do more to decrease the odds of more people getting the damn thing!
So don’t fall into the trap of NORMALCY BIAS and choose to participate in what’s going to eventually lead us out of this!
That is, unless you want to die!