“Unfulfilled promise, loss of innocence, and the spiral into disillusionment.”
Once the beating heart of the recording industry, Los Angeles, CA, is now a shell of its former self.
One time, a place where big budgets ran deep, vintage compressors and Neve consoles ruled, and where the hits were engineered in rooms that were like cathedrals in their own right.
In early 2020, the pandemic hit hard, upending everything like a steamroller. Initially, we were told “it’ll be only two weeks to curb the spread”, then years later, when the narratives fell apart, in the aftermath, everyone realized just how much of a dump COVID-19 really unloaded on the music scene. With an industry dependent on in-person sessions, union crews, and live promotions, the city’s music machine went into cardiac arrest.
This post isn’t just about how the L.A. recording scene was battered by COVID-19; it’s also about the industry’s marked transformation, which has sadly resulted in a situation reminiscent of Detroit’s automobile exodus in the 1970s. The aftermath includes reduced employment, boarded-up landmarks, and a talent pool relocating to better and more affordable horizons.
The Sudden Stop: When the Music Really Did Pause
The first ripple in this tsunami was the falling of dominoes in the live music scene, through concerts, festivals, and tours, decimating a long-standing, well-oiled machine, and negatively affecting marketing and profits, a bullseye on the center for recorded releases. In the undertow, venues were swept and folded, promoters opted out, and seasons were cancelled.
By the end of 2020, the live end of the music business had lost more than $30 billion globally! These were the 2020 calculations according to Pollstar and widely cited in industry analyses of the damage the pandemic levied on performance revenues, and the ensuing ripple effect down the line into the job markets. It was a meltdown that created an environment with fewer tours and album cycles, where booking a $2,000-a-day session or tracking for a full band was not making any financial sense.
"...in the aftermath, everyone realized just how much of a dump COVID-19 really unloaded on the music scene. "
But on the flip side, paradoxically, revenue grew for recorded-music; it increased 7.4% to $21.6 billion worldwide. This was almost entirely powered by a streaming surge of 19.9%, according to IFPI’s Global Music Report.
On paper, it looks good and healthy, but in practice, it didn’t crack up to what it seemed, because the growth hid a structural shift where the money was moved online, and not into the studios. While public performances and sync dipped, physical sales tanked, and downloads also followed. This was the Damoclean sword hanging over the heads of brick-and-mortar recording studios that relied on booking studio days and not on streams.
L.A. Takes the Hit: Jobs Vanish, Output Collapses
The pain in Los Angele was real, and not conceptual, by any means. Looking into the analyses according to Beacon Economics for the Otis Report on the Creative Economy, 90,547 direct jobs in L.A. County were lost in Entertainment and Digital Media between February and December 2020, and adding to that pain was the broader hit to the local economy, which translated to $74 billion in forgone output. Live action filming “completely stopped” with so many people testing positive for COVID, peaking in Q2 2020. Even when film production restarted, the anvil of higher COVID-19 mitigation costs, things like compliance and compliance officers, testing and testing kits, and sanitation, kept filming activities below 2019 levels well into 2021. I don’t think I’ve looked at an Andy Gump in the same way since. As for the recording community, their careers were put on ice. We’re not just talking numbers scratched on some spreadsheet; we’re talking about people like engineers, assistants, session players, cartage companies, and rental houses.
By August of 2020, live music venues in Southern California faced an existential risk. At that time, the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) gave a warning that 90% of independent venues could close permanently if the shutdowns continued beyond six months without federal aid. NIVA estimated $9 billion in expected losses, underscoring just how gnarly the landscape had become.
Meanwhile, in L.A., recording studios that were once humming with activity sat dark in mothballs for months, and even with the possibility of phased reopenings, they still could not offset recurring fixed costs, like rent, utilities, and insurance.
Well, the music just didn’t stop… it MOVED! A move that would rewrite L.A.’s future. Stay tuned for part II.
Image: MaurosArt
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