New York, NY (November 2, 2023)—The pandemic may have officially been declared over by government officials back in May of this year, but COVID fallout continues to plague live entertainment, the audio industry included. Attending the AES convention last week, I ran into more than a few friends or business acquaintances who told similar stories, making it painfully apparent how fragile a line some of the folks in our industry are still walking.
When pandemic restrictions on mass gatherings were lifted, all hell broke loose in the live sound industry due to artists and venues loading up the calendar with postponed tour dates, as well as new commitments. Quickly we found warehouses emptied of gear and ditto tour bus depots, with multiple reports of tours being canceled due to lack of available tour buses. On more than one occasion, I heard stories of an A-list artist—having been turned down by tour bus companies for lack of availability—offering to double or triple the hiring fees that other artists had already paid to book buses and drivers. And so began a fervent scramble to make up for lost revenue.
Anyone who owns or works at a production company can tell you that there’s a huge investment in gear (P.A.s, consoles, microphones, cables, video gear, etc.), and the cold, hard truth is that if the gear is sitting idle in a warehouse—as it was for most of 2020 and 2021—it becomes a financial liability as opposed to a money-maker. Compounding that issue is the fact that our toys take up a hell of a lot of space and can’t simply be stored in a two-car garage, so you can add warehousing rent to that equation.
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This is a scenario I heard repeatedly last week, and it was often followed up with something like, “I maxed out my credit cards to keep my business afloat. I was really busy in 2022 and 2023, but I used a lot of that income to pay down my debt.” One or two folks confided that their debt went into six figures. That’s scary. Other narratives included, “I took a second mortgage,” or, “I dipped into my retirement savings so that I could stay in business.” Yikes.
On the brighter side, at least one event business owner I spoke with was thankful that they owned their warehouse space outright, so their financial burden was limited to maintaining equipment loans.
The stress of such situations has guided more than a few people to early retirement, or to transitioning their business to new ownership. But I can’t help wondering if financial fallout from the pandemic will have a long-term effect at the back end of some careers, forcing people to work longer (i.e., to an older age) than they had planned pre-pandemic, in order to achieve their financial goals. It’s an uncomfortable discussion that poses far more questions than answers.