One of the industries that has been heavily impacted by COVID-19 is performing arts such as music. Live performances have been cancelled or pushed back until further notice, so musicians have been unable to perform live in front of fans. Many recording studios had also been impacted by the pandemic since recording is closely linked to live performances. The article “COVID has hurt live music in Lexington, but what about the recording studio?” covers that the response to the pandemic was a significant drop in recording sessions with artists alongside the halted live performances. Many producers had gotten the opportunity to mix (Combining all of the recorded sounds and editing them appropriately for best sound quality) already recorded projects with the extra time and pick up new mixing projects.

If you know anything about the music industry, you would know that musicians don’t really make a lot of money from their music being listened to on streaming platforms. As explained in the Business Insider article “How musicians really make their money — and it has nothing to do with how many times people listen to their songs” a majority of musicians get their money from touring, merchandise, and licensing their music. When a song makes the charts or gains a significant number of streams, it is useful to understand the size of your fan-base. Then, a musician can present those numbers to parties that would license the music or venues to present that they have a following. Therefore, the fact that the live scene is essentially dead for the time being is a crucial blow to the industry.

As many of you may know, big musicians are taking on projects such as releasing albums and writing new music. Generally, for a large artist, the course of action is often to work on an album and upon the release of the album, they’d go on tour with their new songs added to their repertoire. This process is completely flipped for small artists. Many small artists rely on live shows to build a following and to get a better understanding of how a new song performs; then they’d get enough successful songs to make into an album. The current atmosphere is creating major barriers for smaller artists to build from, but they’re a lot of actions being taken by musicians right now to work through the changes.

I reached out to a few artists or organizations in my personal network as case studies to get a better sense of what musicians have been up to. I spoke to:

Wind Meets West

Wind Meets West is my friend Tony Nguyen, an LA-born NYC-based singer-songwriter and producer who writes music defined by its emotional vulnerability. Many artists have been struggling in these times because they either found themselves paralyzed from the environment, but many became hyper-creative during this time. Since I know Tony to be fairly proactive, I messaged him to see if we can discuss how this pandemic has impacted his work and to see what he has been doing.

We started by talking about what he had been doing before the pandemic heavily broke out. He had a fairly consistent schedule of live shows established and was planning to release a new song every month. He then explained that when things were initially closing and quarantine began, he took the time to reflect on his current business-state and creative-state. He reevaluated his priorities as an artist, made adjustments to his sound, and revisited songs to dissect them. Which had allowed him to make clear upgrades to his online presence and focus more on his art without rushing from live event to live event.

Although many artists are finding it difficult to move through the digital landscape, Tony is very familiar with it and had been ready for a transition before quarantine took effect. One thing for him that took off was getting requests online for producing. It was something he had begun to pick up and establish just as all of this happened. This led to people within his network being aware of it and sharing his information with others once everything was being done from home.

For a large portion of his income, Tony teaches virtual music lessons to kids which many music teachers may have had difficulty doing because they are not as tech-savvy. Since the children are largely home more often, he provides the opportunity to parents for their kids to have something to do for at least 30 minutes. Tony managed to keep or increase his number of clients for this because he can smoothly run a virtual lesson and many parents wanted this service.

Some major drawbacks during COVID-19 for Wind Meets West is that networking at live shows is lost. He is finding that with his improved internet presence he is able to network better, but he misses the feeling of meeting another artist in person. The possibility for fans online is much more likely online than it is in person, but he misses the feeling of sharing the experience live with fans. Ultimately, the shift to online was already happening in the industry, but the sudden shift due to coronavirus had heavily disrupted the industry. Only those with the privilege of being tech savvy may find the chance to succeed in the current climate.

You can visit Wind Meets West’s website for more information on them.

Wind Meets West Overview

Revisiting his art and improving upon it
Developing his online presence and building a stronger network
Producing music for commission
Teaching virtual music lessons

The Chris Ruben Band

The Chris Ruben Band has defined their music as psychedelic funk-rock and are from Long Island, New York. The band consists of five members:

Chris Ruben (Vocals, Guitar)
Brendan Allan (Bass)
Russ Benjamin (Drums)
Eugene Iovine (Keyboards, Synths)
Frank Iovine (Synths, Organs)

Since COVID-19, they have all been up to their own various projects and taking the time to further their progress as a band. I spoke to my close friends Eugene and Frank about what they and the band are up to and then spoke to Chris Ruben for more insight.

The upcoming album “Madness on Repeat” album cover.

Currently, the big project for the band is getting their new album “Madness on Repeat” completed for release in late 2020 or early 2021. The album art is the psychedelic image I provided above and I think it definitely sends the proper message for what fans should expect from the album when it is released. They are working with Ray from Westfall Recording for this project and very much looking forward for its release.

Chris recently made the decision to invest in gear to make recording from home and creating demos easier. This gear and the time have allowed the band to focus heavily on writing new music to use when everything opens back up. The band is also going through some organizational adjustments to better themselves on the business side of things when things pick up.

After speaking to Chris, Eugene, and Frank I also learned that on top of the full band projects they have also all been taking on music-related personal projects. Chris has been picking up a lot of skills in production while playing around with new gear, listening to a lot of music to get a stronger production-side understanding, and continually mastering guitar. Eugene and Frank (who are twin brothers) have been improving their production-side skills as well with classes and direct practice with small projects. They’re also picking up more video skills, so they can apply that knowledge to music videos. Then, the two of them also teach music lessons for additional income.

You can visit The Chris Ruben Band’s website for more information on them.

The Chris Ruben Band Overview

Completing an album
Writing a lot of music
Learning a variety of beneficial skills for production
Reviewing business-side strategy and organization

Virtual Paradise

Virtual Paradise is a multimedia content streaming group who run an online music and game festival. They’re goal is to bring the thrill and music of a festival setting directly into your home alongside tons of games. The founder and manager of this organization is my brother Brad Vanderhoef or “Vault Hunter” as the community might recognize him for DJing and game streaming.

Virtual Paradise logo circa August 2020.

Virtual Paradise was started in April 2020 amidst the height of COVID-19 cases in New York. Vault Hunter is a Video Game/Hard Dance DJ and Twitch Streamer. A longtime goal of his is to provide an escape from the hardships of reality to make people happy. By starting this organization, he was able to bring that goal to life during a time when reality was seemingly very difficult to handle for many people.

Brad is someone who is fairly tech-savvy and extremely familiar with recording and streaming content for online consumption. Before coronavirus, he had already been streaming video games and live DJ sets online through Twitch. When quarantine began, he had realized many DJs were no longer performing because they had only performed live and realized there would be increased interest in a virtual music festival. He had taken to the time to reach out to many DJs, help them with their digital set up, and organize a festival.

Although the contact list is fairly extensive and they were able to have their second festival Virtual Paradise: Polarity in June feature 43 artists, the collective itself is a group of 7 DJs which represent the brand. The set up they have created also supports a multi-stream channel. Two of the streams supported their individual “stages” and the third stream was gaming to get the unique festival experience. The organization is still just beginning, but looking to grow.

You can visit the Virtual Paradise twitch channel for more information on them.

Virtual Paradise Overview

Starting a organization that aims to be bigger than a personal music career
Networking online with people in the industry
Moving to a more digitally-based business model

That’s my take with some supporting information, but I’d love to hear more regarding this topic. If you are a musician, if you have any ideas, or if you have more cases of musicians. The more information that different people can share the better we can all make decisions. Therefore, if you agree, disagree, or want to add more do so in the comments below.

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What Are Musicians Doing During COVID-19?