Los Angeles Music Scene: The Shutdown of a Scene

Photo of The Satellite

The Los Angeles TImes (Dec 11) has an article up looking into the Los Angeles music scene and the length of the shutdown. The article talks with artists ranging from Purity Ring to Mariachi Las Colibri to concert promoters Brownies & Lemonade.

Got to say I found it interesting that Brownies & Lemonade's Digital Mirage festival series has drawn millions of viewers. I remember them running a stage at Broke LA. Good for them. 

Here's the quote that I keyed in on:

“Everyone has their own degrees of despair,” [Megan James of Purity Ring] said. “The bulk of our income will be deeply cut for a long time to come. I didn’t imagine last year I’d be thinking about leaving L.A. But where do we go?”

I mentioned a two things earlier in this pandemic to a couple well known influencers of the Los Angeles music scene (I'll keep their names private as they might not want to be mentioned in this blog post):

1. For every month that music venues stay shut down, it'll take two months for the scene to recover to pre-pandemic levels. (Now since the music scene has remained shut down for so long, perhaps that doesn't work out very well now as it starts to become extreme.) We've been shut down for 9 months now so my assumption would be that it'll take 18 months to recover. If we stay shut down for say another 9 months, it'll take 36 months or 3 years to recover.

2. Megan James is saying that she is thinking about leaving Los Angeles. I have to say that watching online Instagram/Twitch accounts such as WFNM, School Night and Desert Nights, I've noticed a number of Los Angeles based musicians have already moved out of Los Angeles. So one might say they are former Los Angeles based musicians.  

The articles also has a poll where they ask musicians when they believe concerts will return:

14% say winter of 2021. Yeah, they're too optimistic or are thinking about concerts returning in areas that aren't known as Los Angeles. Considering that the vaccine won't be widely available until April (at the earliest), I say not happening.

9% say spring of 2021.

23% say summer of 2021. That aligns with Live Nation's view (though their opinion seems tied to open air concerts/festivals).

27% say fall of 2021. This aligns with my opinion. I've argued on Instagram that live music in Los Angeles will start in September. September is when summer ends and fall starts.

27% say 2022. That actually was my original thought process as I just didn't believe a vaccine would get approved in 2021. But I was wrong so have moved up my timing to September. Maybe I'll be wrong again and it'll move up even earlier.