Nir Furman

Kylee C. Pastore

Composition 1100

09 April 2022

Wind of Change: Music & the Pandemic Era

            The last two years since the COVID-19 pandemic started, we are witnessing big changes in the everyday life and the affection of the pandemic on the social relationships between people. One of the things that got effected the most is the music industry. How many times did you go to a live concert in the past two years ? Seems like the music industry changed and continuing to change due to the pandemic. What are the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the music industry ? As a huge music fan and a musician myself, it is important to understand where it all goes and how everyone can adjust to the new changes. My goal is to show and explain how the music industry looks like nowadays and What can we expect from it.

            What is the music industry business ? The music industry is a very big business that worth over than $50 billion (Hall). The industry’s main income is through live music and recorded music. The live music is one of the biggest ways in which the music industry makes its money, mainly by selling tickets to live performances. The second way of the music industry’s income is recorded music that can be sold and streamed. As the pandemic became a global issue that affecting health and social distancing, one of the first things that we could see an immediate effect on, is the music industry and the live performances that continued to get cancel more and more. You might think that in 2022, most of the performances got back and the industry rebuilt itself – which is true. But, we cannot deny the fact that things were changed, and the music industry had and still trying to find ways to adjust to the new changes.

when we talk about the music industry and live performances, the first things that comes up is the relationship between the artist and the fans. Eventually, this is what is all about, and when COVID-19 affecting social distancing, artists cannot preform and fans cannot attend in concerts. Is that so ? We will see a bit later. As the pandemic hit, concerts and live show almost all over the world were canceled. Artist and performers realized that they will not be able to perform in front of their fans, and fans understood that the concert that they have been waiting for got canceled. This situation has created a big frustration for both sides. One of the things that changed because of social distance restrictions is the direct fan and artist meetings. It did not only affected the relationship between both fans and artists, but also affected financially on the music industry business. One of the elements in music festivals and big show is a “artist meet-and-greet packages” (Aziz) Usually, it includes a VIP seats and entrance, meeting with the artists and more personal experience which also costs more money. Seems like the pandemic restrictions brought this experience down, and now we can see different and other ways of fans and artists relationship. You might say that these days came back to what it was before the pandemic, and we have all the shows back, almost without restrictions, and you will be right. The changes that we are facing have not necessarily replaced live performances and social relationships, but added a new way of how the music industry looks like today.

We can see that the music industry adjusts to those changes in couple of different ways. Now when we realized that the relationships between the fans and artists has changed, we see how artists and performers are taking the power to their hands and connecting with the fans directly through social media. We can see a huge new scene of the music industry when more and more artists creating their own channels and perform music live from home. Recording labels sometimes provide live streaming equipment to performers (Hall). The pandemic forced the fans to listen to music in a new way, possibly be able to contact with their favorite artists and be part of a new scene that will be in addition to live performances.

Another interesting thing that happened because of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the music industry faced with a challenge of social distancing, and now it is creating different ways of making and producing music, mostly from the artistic side. The music industry needs to think “out of the box” (Taylor). A different kind of performances and music clips started to come up as the music industry tried to keep the audience and bring them something new from their favorite artists. One of the examples that we have is a musical production of Oscar Sansom, the director of Forest of Black Studios. He described this new opportunity as a new genre for the live performance scene. “For Sansom, the challenge is now about how to convey some of the ‘energy and emotion’ of traditional live music by filming in new ways and locations” (Taylor). While thinking of how he can make the band’s Biffy Clyro gig, that had to be livestreamed without any fans, Sansom came with the idea to “built a cube for the Scottish rock band to play inside” (Taylor). The cube was built in a way that the band could only see their own reflection, without even being able to see the producers and the camera and sound operators. This situation creates a feeling when the band and the audience can feel the social distance in other way, creating more tension and letting us feel the missing interaction between artists and fans. Seems like the response to the new reality, bringing the creative minds of the music industry, to make more interesting way to stream music, do live performances and make music. The good thing about that is that those changes are just getting in addition to the normal life and the comeback of live shows. As part of the adjustment to the new world, the music industry finds another thing that can be offered to the audience as a solution to the social distance problem. We can see these days that a lot of performances went online, since many audience so it as an opportunity to enjoy the show and the live performance from home. Different venues and performance spaces decided to invest in live stream equipment to be able to do both online and live performances, sometime even at the same time. An example of that we can see in a venue called Barbican in London. To bring the shows online, “additional cameras were installed around the concert hall and stage to provide viewers with an experience that was familiar but fresh” (Taylor). Those new options continuing to create a new scene of media. Fans will be able to listen to music and watch concerts from different angles and options that not necessarily were developed before the pandemic. We can agree that the pandemic brought new options with it and made the people to think differently in order to keep the industry to run and work during the pandemic.

As I mentioned earlier, you might ask why all this information is important since in April 2022 almost all the live performances return to what it was before covid ? well, you are definitely right, and I asked myself the same question. This is why I was motivated to do research about how the music industry going to look life after the pandemic. I can tell that all the new changes and the things that I talked about are important because all of it not replacing the live performance and the music industry business, but helps to create more channels and options for performing, streaming, producing and so on. It feels to me like an evolution of how we used to see the music industry, another layer of creativity.

I want to talk about another area of the music industry that does not get enough attention, but very important for a lot of people. I am talking about the music education. The education system itself changed a lot because of the pandemic, but the music education has some very interesting changes that I would like to share with you. The pandemic caused a huge use of technology to make music and teach music. Now when music classes in went online, some of the older generation teacher (and not only) had to learn to use technology, software, microphones to provide the best music class and make it feel like it is regular in-person class. An academic journal about the music education says that “Professors and instructors are learning and becoming more comfortable with online methodologies, platforms, and application, at least to offer their courses ‘virtually’ as we practice social distancing” (Urkevich). Because all of that, we are witnessing more and more options to contact with professors and teachers that all over the world and learn music in a high level. This new way of education also helps to create music together but individually, professors help students to create musical parts at home, record it and then combine and learn how to work technologically.

From a personal perspective, as a music student myself and a drum teacher I can tell that I discovered a lot from covid and learned how to deal with technological issues by studying and teaching. I was working as a drum teacher in a music conservatory, started right when the pandemic hit. Right away we started with to teach via zoom. At the beginning I could not understand how to do that, but step by step I learned to use musical equipment, microphones and different platforms, to provide the best drum lesson to m students. On the other side, as a student I saw how it is possible to study music in different and new ways, it is even forced me to use my computer instead of paper, and why not help mother nature if we can, right ?

We can all agree that the pandemic created a huge change in the world in almost every aspect in life, and it is hard to remember when was the last time that the world completely shut down. But, I think that all of those reason that I mentioned above, of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the music industry, helped us to create new ways of making music, perform, collaborate and more other things. It doesn’t matter if you are an artist, producer or just music fan, there is now doubt that the pandemic affected everyone, and we all felt how social distancing affecting our lives. In my opinion, we can see some positive aspects after all. The concerts and live performances today are completely returned to normal, the people are able to go to concerts again, as the artists can perform and continue with their art in-person. The changes that happened in the music industry will stay probably forever, it is probably a huge booster shot to the industry when now we have new and creative options in addition to the standard live performances. Because of that, the music business itself is able to create new income channels by attracting fans to new experiences. The media has a great impact on how the music industry looks like, and I do not say that it was not happening before the pandemic, but as I mentioned, it is like a booster shot that accelerating the industry to create itself.

The music industry is a matter of supply and demand. The music industry is a social business. People’s will to art, music and emotional experience are bigger than any pandemic. After two years of craziness, people are starting to feel again the normal life, by receiving a big lesson and learning to not take anything for granted. We have the powers to make the music industry on the best side and collaborations can always promote new creation. For me, this is how the pandemic affected the music industry, and in the end, we can only accept the changes and learn how to build with it a greater community.

 

 

 

 

Work Cited

Aziz, Adam. “10 Ways the Coronavirus Will Change the Music Industry.” Okayplayer, 2020, https://www.okayplayer.com/music/ways-the-coronavirus-will-effect-the-music-industry.html.

Hall, Stefan Brambilla. “This Is How Covid-19 Is Affecting the Music Industry.” World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/this-is-how-covid-19-is-affecting-the-music-industry.

Taylor, Alex. “How Covid Is ‘Creating a New Genre’ for Live Music.” BBC News, BBC, 8 Feb. 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55947209.

Urkevich, Lisa A. “Our Rebirth: Reshaping the Music Discipline after the Covid-19 Pandemic.” College Music Symposium, vol. 60, no. 1, College Music Society, 2020, pp. 1–8, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26919801.