Live music is about to get its grand reopening, and it's going to be total chaos...


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For a nation that has spent the past year-plus doomscrolling about travel bans, spikes in cases, variants, respirator shortages, and shutdowns, this spring contains undeniable seeds of optimism. With the vaccine rollout ramping up at almost twice the expected speed, travel businesses are already touting a return to something like normal by late summer.

For the music industry, particularly live music and small clubs, the recovery doesn’t feel nearly as swift or straightforward. For most of the past year, it’s been nothing but cancellations, shutdowns, delayed releases, and creative frustrations. Global live music revenue fell a staggering two-thirds last year, from $30 billion to $10 billion, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, perhaps the first time in years recorded music made artists more money than touring. The hashtag #oneyeardark, memorializing a year of empty stages, began circulating on social media early this month, a feed full of marquees stuck in limbo.

Daniel Gill, a music publicist, describes this as the coming “mad dash.” As soon as touring gets the green light, every single act and artist pining for fans, live shows, and touring money will want to hit the road at the same time, flooding a venue ecosystem already strained by a year-plus of shutdowns. More and more bands, like indie rock stalwarts Dinosaur Jr., will start announcing fall dates. Timmy Hefner, an agent with Ground Control Touring, recently had to rebook a fall tour after learning that venues in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia had closed. “There’s also going to be a huge wave of artists releasing new music all at the same time, which is also going to be crazy,” Gill says.

“It is going to be the biggest $#@!show in the history of the entertainment industry.”

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Full disclosure: I was at both of the Springsteen concerts - February 23, 2016 in downtown Cleveland and at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, August 7, 1985


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