Zoom lessons, Friday night livestream on Instagram, and virtual album release parties are all examples of how pandemic life has pushed musicians into the clouds. The social gatherings that normally define the year for many old time musicians instead morphed into a Facebook group called “Quarantine Happy Hour.” With the number of members approaching 20K, this group easily dwarfs the number of any old time music festival from the past. The group runs nightly concerts that receive great enthusiasm and participation, giving participants the ability not only to reach a wide audience, but also receive some income in the form of virtual tip jars. The QHH is just a slice of the new online music scene. Countless musicians took the opportunity to livestream performances in 2020, including many of the industry’s most recognizable names, like Yo-Yo Ma, John Legend, and Chris Martin. Album productivity remained steady, with heavy hitters such as Taylor Swift releasing not one, but two albums.
Acoustic music Facebook group, “Quarantine Happy Hour” is an online music festival that has been running for over a year. The group features nearly 20,000 members
Despite the forming of cloud communities, daily livestream performances, online tip jars, and steady artistic productivity, major questions hover over the music industry as the world transitions past COVID:
Do struggling small businesses have the financial resources to pay live music?
Will closed concert halls and music venues reopen?
Is it worth touring over live-streaming all year round?
When will big businesses and online streaming platforms start valuing music?
Should musicians currently focus on teaching full time instead of performing full time?
Does a career in music provide any security whatsoever?
What will happen when another crises takes place?
And many more………..
Additionally, there are gaps in the pre-pandemic musician life that the new online music scene and social media does not address. Those gaps are largely, and perhaps ironically, social. The lag time and 2D representation on Zoom is no substitute for an in-person lesson or workshop. The energy emanating from a crowd when they recognize their favorite song from a band gets lost when alone on the comfort of a couch.
Festivals in the past have provided an “oasis for musicians to teach, learn, collaborate and create”, as the Fretboard Journal described the Shasta Music Summit. They also provided a much needed escape from the daily grind of ordinary life, giving participants a sense of adventure, community, and creativity all at once. These traits are why attendees call festivals like Weiser, a famous old time music festival in the state of Idaho, “Christmas in June.” In a totally online environment, this sense of escape is at least somewhat lost, as the moment one closes the laptop, it’s back to normal. Back to everyday stresses.
Musical performance at the Shasta Music Summit
Aside from the social failure of the online music scene, the financial end of the spectrum presents steep challenges as well. Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music, and other streaming services leave the artist little financial incentive to stay motivated. The already shaky confidence musicians had in streaming platforms reached a new low in 2020 when Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said, “…obviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” Bandcamp was praised by musicians for offering all proceeds to the artist once a month during 2020, showing just how little music artists expect from the current landscape.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
COVID hasn’t brought down the music industry. If anything, it has revealed problems that already existed, and forced musicians to think of creative solutions to these problems, rather than continue to silently ignore them. Furthermore, the pandemic has forced many music traditionalists and purists to take a closer look at technology and how it can help in navigating the way music is presented and secured in modern society.
Speaking of solutions, one has to wonder, what would happen if the strengths of the new online music scene were combined with the strengths of the traditional music scene?
If one combined the technology of live streaming and Zoom instruction together with the community of in-person collaboration, music would continue to reach all corners of the world without losing the important aspect of interpersonal connection. However, there’s one important piece of technology missing: cryptography. When cryptography becomes utilized, musicians can then generate their own cryptocurrency, thereby eliminating the third parties who continually profit from an ever-increasing musical workload.
When one takes all of these combined solutions into account, it starts to look a whole lot like the formation of a startup city, or possibly many startup cities.
According to Balajis, it takes 7 steps to create a startup city. Many of which, thanks to the adjustments brought about by COVID, legions of musicians have already achieved. As illustrated, in 2020, even a niche musical community like old time regional music can form a strong cloud-based presence. Indeed, a musical subgenres like old time is a unique feature in which to build an identity of a city.
The second step in the framework of Balajis is to organize an economy around remote work. This is where the experience of high-quality remote recordings, lessons, and livestreams comes into play. The economy of the new music city would be to export the music under it’s own cryptocurrency. Let’s call the city’s currency a “NOTE”. Nearly every recording, lesson, and live concert would be doubly live and streamed at the same time, thereby fulfilling all of the possible audience experiences. The city would create it’s own streaming platform for audiences to listen to around the world. Through the usage of smart contracts, every one of these experiences would cost a small fee in the value of a “NOTE”, which would then be sent directly to the artist. As the world starts admiring the music coming from the city, and in-person shows start to gain traction, the currency would continue to grow in value.
The logistics of running a music city seem fairly straightforward given the hundreds of years of resourceful living that musicians have practiced. Whether touring on the road or camping for weeks at festivals, musicians have honed their communities to achieve a great deal of joy and civility.
As simple as expansion from a musical camp to a musical city sounds, how would one get started?
The notorious financial struggles of artists has given way to numerous crowd funding projects over recent years. On Kickstarter, musician Amanda Palmer raised almost $1.2 million for the funding of one album alone. If fans want to see music from a musical supergroup in the form of a city, they will find a way to fund it.
All that’s left is to build, and then listen to the resulting music.