(Variety) The pandemic has crushed the live-entertainment business, and concert venues in particular, all over the world — but New York’s may have been hit the hardest in the U.S. Due largely to the density of the city and its mass-gathering-based culture, the virus struck New York first and fastest, and has claimed nearly 33,000 lives. Consequently, the city has some of the most strict social-distancing rules in the country, and the road to the return of its concert business is a complicated one.
But the virus’ devastating impact isn’t the only factor making the return of live entertainment such a daunting prospect. Unlike many cities, its tightly packed buildings provide little potential for venues to expand into outdoor space, and many performance areas are upstairs or downstairs, making socially distanced egress difficult. And while rent forbearance and negotiations with insurance or utility companies have brought some relief, PPP loans are rarely an option — those are designed to keep staff on the payroll, but without shows, there’s little work. Thus, most venues are hanging by a thread, often paying full or near-full insurance and utilities with effectively zero revenue.
According to a summer survey by the newly formed National Independent Venues Assn.,some 90% of the independent venues in the U.S. said they would be forced to close within months without federal aid.
For many, the main beacon of hope is the “Save Our Stages” Act, which aims to bring $10 billion in relief funding to independent venues; it is attached to the larger $2.2 trillion Heroes Act that Congress and the president are staging a public tug-of-war over. Despite strong bipartisan support, Save Our Stages shows little sign of passing before the election. (NIVA is holding a massive “Save Our Stages” virtual festival this weekend in partnership with YouTube to raise funds and awareness for the cause, with performances from Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Brittany Howard and more than 30 others from indie venues all across the country.)
In New York concert venues alone, there’s no shortage of evidence of the need for federal aid. And while surprising few of them have shut down permanently — yet — the heads of NYIVA, the local chapter of NIVA, Justin Kantor of Greenwich Village venue Le Poisson Rouge and Jen Lyon of Mean Red Productions, laid out just how daunting the current situation is.
“Eight out of ten New York venues have not been able to negotiate rent relief from landlords, according to [a NYIVA] survey — they’re on the hook for full rent with almost no money coming in,” Kantor says. “And most of those who have [received rent relief] have gotten deferrals and not reductions, so that’s hanging over their heads when they do reopen. The main reason we haven’t seen many closures is because landlords are sitting tight, but venues are in a very precarious position. There are very small profit margins in this business — most venues need at least 80-to-85?pacity [per show] to break even."
Lyon chimes in, “For New York, it will take about $40 million [in relief funding] to get us to January, which isn’t a huge, crazy number in the grand scheme of things, considering how much impact our industry has on the economy. I’m not sure the city or the state really understand the value of these venues,” she continues. “The city reaps so many benefits from us. We bring people to neighborhoods where nothing else is going on — before the pandemic, I threw parties in Chinatown, and I know that I flooded that neighborhood with revenue by bringing a thousand kids to a neighborhood they [otherwise] wouldn’t be in. How is that being overlooked?”
Kantor adds, “Even in a tourist center like Greenwich Village, if [venues like] the Blue Note and the Bitter End and us close and get replaced by drug stores, how many people will want to hang out here? The value of the real estate around us will go down.”
The hardship imposed by the pandemic isn’t limited to bricks and mortar — independent promoters need live entertainment and places to stage it. Alex Damashek, head of New York-based hip-hop promoter Move Forward Music, frequently staged concerts at venues like S.O.B.’s and Baby’s All Right, along with bigger rooms like Irving Plaza and Webster Hall.
“We were coming off of our best year in 2019 and riding high at the top of this year,” he tells Variety. “We were doing a lot of shows, we had a series with Complex [magazine] all set for South by Southwest — and then it all came crumbling down in March: We cancelled 25 shows. I’m lucky that as an independent promoter I don’t have the same overhead as a venue, but still, all of a sudden, the income turned off like a spigot.”
He spent the first weeks of the pandemic trying to figure out a workable business model to livestream concerts, “something that will continue post-pandemic and carry into the future,” he says, and Move Forward announced a livestream series with Twitch earlier this month that launches with a two-day virtual festival this weekend. It includes performances by such up-and-coming hip-hop acts as UMI, Guapdad 4000 and others, as well as discussion panels.
While Move Forward’s Twitch livestreams are initially free, Damashek’s goal is to leverage his company’s reputation as a tastemaker for new artists and create a subscription model where the paid livestreams “add layers: behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, custom emojis and having the ability to ask questions during a talk-show format,” he says, citing Erykah Badu’s unconventional, interactive livestreams from her home studio earlier this year — which featured different setlists and settings and substantial viewer input — as a model.
“We’ll never replace live concerts with livestreams,” he says. “But Erykah’s livestreams were really inspiring — they were live performances that weren’t necessarily a concert but were still a special experience, and that’s what we’re trying to build.”
Peter Shapiro, who owns the Brooklyn Bowl franchise (with locations also in Las Vegas and Nashville) and the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, just north of the city, has also used livestreams and other assets to help stem the financial bleeding.
“We’ve pivoted,” he tells Variety. “Our venues are all wired, so we’re doing livestreams [with artists performing in the venues with no audience], particularly from the Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville. About six weeks ago we started selling tickets for them; we sold a couple thousand for a Margo Price show, and if you put, say, a $10 minimum on them, a lot of people choose to pay more, just to help out. We’re selling merch; we’re broadcasting archived livestreams of past concerts. We’re adjusting and trying to stay flexible.
“Obviously, it’s not the same as what it was — at all,” he allows. “But it’s meaningful.”
However, for many New York venues, livestreaming isn’t necessarily a viable option: To stage a show, even with no audience, would mean the venue is technically open, and “if we try to do that, does it drive up our rent?,” asks Kathryn Aberlin of New York-based promoters Bowery Presents, which operates Brooklyn Steel, Webster Hall, Rough Trade and other venues in the city. Staffing is an issue as well: “We had to furlough a lot of people, and you can’t un-furlough someone for one event and then re-furlough them, so does that make sense? There’s not really a clear answer.”
Like most venues, even being closed is an expensive proposition for Bowery’s rooms. “We’re still paying utilities: We have to keep our venues at a certain temperature to be sure the equipment doesn’t get ruined; we still have to pay insurance,” Aberlin says.
Those problems and others are also being faced by Elsewhere, a popular three-year-old venue specializing in indie-rock located in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick, which was just starting to get into the black when the pandemic hit. It has an advantage not many venues have in the form of Dhruv Chopra, who is CFO of the venue and the connected music-events company PopGun Presents and has a strong background in finance (he worked as an investment analyst for five years before taking the plunge into the venue business).
“We turned a small profit in 2019 and were about to start paying off our debt and investors” when the pandemic hit, he says. On March 13, they laid off “98 percent” of their staff — “we’ve helped them as much as we could,” he says sadly — and applied for PPP loans and an Economic Injury Disaster Loan; they are also fortunate to have a landlord who “gets it” and renegotiated with their insurance company.
While Elsewhere has a small dining operation on its roof that has “helped keep the building and brand active,” Singh says, “we’re still bleeding money every month. And we’re looking at no meaningful business until spring or summer of 2022.”
Other promoters have started looking into alternate businesses. Adam Torres, a New York-based promoter and artist manager who handles Latin, hip-hop and other genres and runs a seven-person company, admits, “I was in a fog for the first weeks of the pandemic, to be honest with you. But once I shook it off, we started pivoting: Livestreams, virtual shows, although those aren’t really profitable — and where we can, we’re doing free events underwritten by brands.” But he also hedged his bets by investing in restaurant and hospitality businesses.
Torres feels, as do many in the business, that the government has “turned a blind eye” to the live industry’s struggle. “We’ve been cut off at the knees,” he says. “Give us a lifeline to survive with Save Our Stages. Without a 2021 season, whether you’re an independent or a conglomerate like Live Nation or AEG, I don’t see how 80 to 90 percent of these businesses can survive.”
Of governmental support, Lyon says, “Though we’ve had communications with the city and the state, we still have no solutions, no opening plans, and no funding from them. Thanks to NIVA, we’re talking to venues all over the country — Oregon, Seattle [King County in Washington], Nashville and Chicago have money earmarked. So other cities and states are finding funding for independent venues — we need New York to do the same.”
Contacted by Variety, Ariel Palitz, Senior Executive Director of the Office of Nightlife at New York Mayor Bill deBlasio’s Office of Media and Entertainment, says, “We’re fulfilling our purpose as a dedicated support to nightlife during this pandemic. We’ve been in constant contact with venues, amplifying their concerns, advocating for their needs, keeping them informed and connecting them to resources to help them survive and hopefully reopen and recover.” She cited several efforts, including a free mediation program to help venues resolve conflicts with landlords and neighboring businesses; multi-agency “Town Calls,” where venues can get answers to their questions directly from government officials; and a checklist, awesomely titled “What to Expect When You’re Inspected,” to help operators understand new rules and what inspectors are looking for, among other endeavors.
Aberlin, while acknowledging that “we’re all in a situation we’ve never been in,” asks whether the city or state can provide some protection for venues when they do open. “Is there a liability waiver the city or state can provide?,” she asks. “Because if we’re legally allowed to do, say, a 50-percent capacity show and we have all of our [distancing] measures in place, but someone gets COVID and they try to come after us with a ton of lawsuits, we may not be able to sustain ourselves, and that’s true all over the country.”
Like everyone, she remains focused on the day the music starts playing again, although no one has any idea when that might be or what it will look like.
“It’ll come back and it’ll reinvent itself — that’s what we do and that’s what we’ve always done, and if it means more independents come up and more people have opportunities, I’m all for that. But,” she asks, “when we do open up there’s gonna be a flood of shows, what state will fans be in financially, and what will that mean for ticket prices? How far can people’s dollars stretch if they start getting evicted or laid off?
“It’s gonna be a brave new world on the other side of this,” she concludes. “People are aching for live music and that’s not going to change, so I’m excited for that — wherever and however it happens.”
Connecticut BioTech and TicketNetwork are teaming up to distribute 10 million respirator face masks to live entertainment venues to bring back live events.
New tour dates, cities and venues announced.
Hearing on “Examining the Impact of COVID-19 on the Live Event Entertainment Industry”
As part of a new partnership the donation helps independent venues and promoters across the U.S. as they wait for Congress to act
Hit especially hard by the pandemic, with no clear end in sight, this may be a disturbing trend
A Comprehensive Study on Human Connection Amidst a World of Online Experiences
Kinaxis InConcert to sponsor up to 30 concerts supporting artists in diverse music genres across Canada
Fan Favorite Categories: Quarantine Ditty, Best Cover, No Stage No Problem, Best Outdoor Performance...and more
It's the Grammy-Winner's first new solo single in three years
All proceeds to benefit Musically Fed, Nashville Rescue Mission & Second Harvest Food Bank
Report created with support from the CMA, Nashville Songwriters Association International & More
The One Night Event Will Kick Off on December 31, 2020 from 8 p.m. to Midnight at Hilton Daytona Beach New Year's Eve Beach Bash Outdoor Vertical Concert Serie
find out how one band is paying homage to the venues they love and we all miss
As the Leading Music Industry Charity, MusiCares is Giving Gift Cards to Music People in Need to Cover Essential Goods This Holiday Season
Watch her version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” here
#DanceAway2020 first phase lineup features DJs including Carl Cox, Jamie Jones, TOKiMONSTA, Nastia as they each bring in the New Year live from cities across the globe
Presented by Topeka & Sixthman, April 26-May 1, 2021 in Miramar Beach Fl.
It will provide grants to Chicago venues, their staff and to local artists as each struggle to survive the moratorium on live events.
Includes remix of lead single "Black Woman", produced by Supa Dups & feat. Reggae Icon Tarrus Riley
Punk rock was born and bred into Gainesville natives Mike & The Nerve, who have just released their new single "Captive Audience."
Watch the video for BELLY OF THE BEAST here
this small business owner is helping to turn dreams into a reality, during this difficult time.
Over 30 jazz greats and Broadway legends join together to usher in the holiday season
Chalk it up to another victim of government inaction in supporting the businesses that support it
Earn money from your music in these uncertain times
The growing adoption of digital music services is one of the key factors driving the market.
A New Market Study, titled “Music Market Upcoming Trends, Growth Drivers and Challenges” has been featured on WiseGuyReports.
The First Single From Andrew Lloyd Webber's New Musical 'Cinderella'
BMF tackled the challenges of COVID-19 while simultaneously meeting the needs of the public through exceptional cultural offerings.
With the Purplepass event management software, the venue can host future events with proper social distancing tools in place and safe ticket handling.
Partnership Will Allow NIVA Members Access To Pioneering Livestream Technology To Create Content And Unique Fan Experiences Geared Towards Saving Independent Venues Through NIVA’s Emergency Relief Fund
Today, the hip-hop supervillain MF DOOM launches a timely new collection of physical merch: four variations of collectible masks inspired by MF DOOM's signature look, and a brand new line of t-shirts, hoodies, and sticker packs.
New Holiday Album HARK! Out Oct 30th, Vinyl LP Out Nov 20th
"Ready to Reopen" analyzes COVID-19 insights from 87 US venue managers and their guests
Featuring Sandra St. Victor and Grandmaster Melle Mel
First Battle Rap League to Successfully Navigate Streaming on Multiple Tiers at Cost for Rap & Hip-Hop Fans & Creators
Come Together With Their First Live Show to Benefit The ACM Lifting Lives COVID Relief Fund
Week spotlights independently-owned music venues, the backbone of the live music scene
The week-long opening night celebration features multiple world premieres
A work of wild poetry and wide-eyed abandon, set to a glorious collision of folk and country and groove-heavy rock-and-roll.
Barcelona's multi-hyphenate metal quintet announce a tour that we hope will actually happen
The hourly timed entry restricts the number of vehicles entering the experience, facilitating a smoother flow of traffic.
100% of public donations will go to support the various non-profits and will be raised via text and online fundraising during broadcasts and streams.
The pair claimed seven trophies apiece at the pandemic-delayed show
Since the Symphony launched its free fall outdoor concert series, its musicians have performed for fans and made new friends from the urban core to suburbs on both sides of the state line
Join Kylie On A Journey To Her Infinite Disco, A Performance Spectacular Streamed Across The Globe On November 7
featuring DOJA CAT, Charli XCX, Henry Lau & Video Club
Stone Gossard made some serious promises this campaign season.
Yep, a live show, actually quite a few happening at City Winery Nashville
The Dark and Brooding "EP3" Now Available on All Major Platforms
Salvadoran recording artist Joseph Fermán releases his new single, "La Vida", a testimony to living life to its fullest.
The parties at the club are so legendary they have inspired lyrics from Drake, Kanye West and Rick Ross.
His newest release is filled with beautiful melodies, while also embracing fear and uncertainty.
Quirky 80s new-wave inspired tune tells the story we all know too well
Sheffield UK Festival looking forward to 2021, We're hoping it sticks
It's time to bring back more like this....
This one-of-a-kind experience is set for Friday, October 30th with the pre-show starting at 6:00 PM Eastern
Truly a song for the days we find ourselves in
Fans can expect even more new music from both Mize and Dunn early 2021.
A memory-soaked highlight; a strong bass line rings and accompanies Raj’s masterful wordplay as he marvels at how his life has changed.
Disco Donnie announces their new drive in experience
With the recovery of the China economy in full swing after the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for music festivals and concerts is strong and likely to continue
to Launch a Fundraising Campaign for Struggling Brazilian Immigrants in the Arts, Events & Entertainment Industries
Featuring Randall Bramblett of Traffic and Steve Winwood and Charlie Hoskyns of The Popes
As Theatres and Performing Arts Centers Suffer thru a Nationwide COVID Dry Spell, One Innovative Entertainment Company Brings Live Streaming Concerts to the Rescue.
The concert featuring Offset includes performances from Offset's artists, Duke Deuce, YRN Mango and surprise guests
Styx front man Tommy Shaw, renowned concert promoter Danny Zelisko and the late singer-songwriter John Prine inducted Tuesday during live-streamed ceremony in Nashville
Malone’s competition for the show’s biggest prize, top artist, include Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Khalid and Jonas Brothers
Pinecrest Gardens Brings Jazz Masters to Music Lovers' Homes with Virtual Concert Series to Help Feed Families Affected by the Pandemic
Sharon gives the lowdown on the dark lord's final jaunt. At least the Euro dates
Covid-19 strikes yet another blow against the arts
Chalk this up to "only in New York" and the reason we all love that city.
Some long needed assistance is on the horizon.
Executives from Live Nation, AEG, OVG, IAVM and more form US Coalition to help save the music industry on the day after President Trump stopped negotiations that would have provided a lifeline.
Attendance will be restricted to 25% of a venue’s capacity or 250 people, whichever is less.
During Covid-19 the live experience platform expands artist livestream offerings to venues - including New Orleans' iconic Preservation Hall - to bring artists back to the stage
Stats
Elapsed time: 0.3133 seconds
Memory useage: 2.9MB
V2.geronimo