Recession and the music biz

[HolyGrowl]

Hi there,

How do you guys foresee the music biz situation with a recession looming?

Do you think it will be unaffected?
Do you think people will go out to shows less and buy even less music?
Are you planning to get a day job to make up for a slow period of gigs?
Or do you think people will want to be entertained more to help get their minds off hard times?

[Deacon_Blues]

I think it will be hard for instrument shops to survive, but I believe people will always want entertainment and pay for it. It's usually not very expensive to go to a concert or to a pub with live music.

[tycobb73]

Cover bands in bars that don't charge a cover will be fine. Everyone else will suffer. People drink more during recessions.

[pbass2]

It's already been affected. A lot. For the overall entertainment biz, it aint looming--it's here. For music it's been a big triple-whammy: the entire entertainment biz has been deep in the throes of adjusting to the digital age for a while now(and how to still make money in the new age), music is increasingly regarded as a cheap or free medium, and then the economy tanking on top of all that. The squeeze has ben on for some time, but this year it is in your face out here. Lotsa guys are not working at all--session players, composers, producers, engineers. It is grim. I consider myself lucky to be squeaking by, still busy, but the budgets are slashed for just about every aspect of the entertainment biz. Gotta just hang on, diversify as much as you can, keep making great music, try and evolve with the technological changes at hand, and push harder than ever.
One thing's for sure--it will never be the same again--this is major metamorphosis time for the biz . . .

[Gard]

(knocking on wood loudly and constantly...)

So far, we have not noticed much of a downturn in the MI side of things.

Most (not all) of our dealers are holding the line on sales, some are actually reporting an uptick in sales!

All of my industry reading is reporting that sales are steady to slightly brisk for MI.

As tycobb points out, live music in the right location will actually tend to see an upswing, the one thing that seems to go up in recession/depression (of the economic variety...although it can be true of other versions of depression ) is drinking. Not saying it's a "good thing" overall, just a fact.

I hope that things don't change much in our industry, and hopefully this will cause a renewed interest in LIVE music as folks tend to keep closer to home and spend their leisure time (and $'s) on nights out one or two times a month instead of saving up for long and expensive vacations. Hopefully, the "neighborhood bar" will make a comeback and give us good venues for live local music again...

It's all a matter of looking for the positive side of things, and then working toward them...

(still knocking on wood...)

[b_carville]

Amen to that,Pbass 2 !

It's getting a lot harder. I have one partime job & may have to strap on another.

Many venues are dropping live music altogether. My dayjob band does almost nothing but weddings/corporate/private parties. After this last financial fiasco,the corporates went WAY down. Needless to say the banks,car dealers & retailers who hired us every year aren't this year.

The weekend warrior/partime bands I fill in with are way off as well.Most of those bands are lucky if they get two gigs a month.

Bars that people can walk to or not drive far & have no cover charge seem to be doing OK but a lot of them have dropped live music. Especially during football season & with our Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series there's been a lot of weeknight /Sunday cancellations as well.

Two guys in my band do really well doing Children's music.One guy performs at different daycares,the other has his own performing/booking/music lesson company.I don't think I'd be well suited for that but they do really well with it.

I'm thinking of doing a solo/acoustic act to work weeknights.
I know some guys(& Ladies!) who are signed who are doing acoustic/cover stuff to make ends meet.

[pbass2]

Indeed I will say that, go-figure---live music is VERY strong overall, relatively speaking to the big picture. Pretty interesting considering that not too many years ago, many folks were sounding its death-knell.
A lot of that is because bands HAVE to tour to survive now considering the changes in how music is bought(or not bought and sold. Regardless, it's a positive phenomenon.
We're in a big shake-it-up/re-structure everything period right now---major growing pains. Great things will ultimately come from it all.