The longer the pandemic continues, the harder it gets for the live music business (and other cultural sectors built around live performance) to sustain hope of a ‘return to normal’. I hate saying it, but there it is. By now, both fans and artists are craving live performance, we truly are. Just like we crave international travel and large gatherings of friends and family. But truth be told, we will wait these things out as long as we have to - it’s part of the wider grieving process that comes with a pandemic.

Meanwhile, the industries on the other side of the equation face a ticking clock. When it comes to live music, there is a distinct optimism (and sadly, lack of credibility) about those shows we see rescheduled for 2021. This is because we know it is unlikely any vaccine will be ready, let alone distributed. Meanwhile, with social distancing not only compromising live experiences for fans, producers and performers but also more lockdowns, circuit-breakers and other interventions, the situation gets more precarious every day.

In the UK, a ray of light shot through the sector earlier this month, as a number of music venues, festivals and promoters were among the organisations receiving a share of more than £76 million in Culture Recovery Fund grants (i.e. not loans). Some 250 independent music venues within the Music Venue Trust network were included, securing £41 million between them. No such luck for many others of course, and there has been no equivalent effort in the world’s largest music market the USA. Credit instead goes to streaming giants like YouTube - stepping in to run virtual events on behalf of real world venues, such as the #SOSFEST. Meanwhile, established music artists and live sector employees everywhere have been engaged in heroic efforts to shore up local venues through small-scale ‘save our stages’ type initiatives.

But here is the question for all organisations receiving financial relief – what will they choose to do with these funds? I don’t ask lightly. They face the toughest of choices. Some venue bosses have already declared they will keep staff on pay as long as possible. Maybe that’s all the money some will get – enough to keep the lights on with a skeleton staff. Others may be able to carry out essential maintenance, or refurbish to come back looking a little newer and fitter. Others will use the money to run below-capacity, socially-distanced and highly-compromised events.

But will venues (and smaller promoters) have enough funds to invest in greater capability to stream live? To prepare themselves for the future, now we have a taster of what can happen at any time? I hope so. Venues need to prepare themselves for live streamed productions – better internet, purpose-designed staging, performance stages, improved sound capability, more cameras. The digital hybrid venue will be fitter for purpose as the virtual circuit emerges.

The ‘virtual circuit’

What is emerging to fill the gap left by live’s hiatus is a frantic and fragmented landscape, with a range of start-up platforms alongside the big video streamers (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch etc.). But does this fragmented landscape look coherent for fans? Perhaps it’s not too different from the ‘real world’, where fans get to choose shows from a vast array of different physical venues (that choice limited to obvious constraints of proximity and capacity). But of course, fans could buy tickets through the promoters who knitted together the circuit through ticketing.

Artists desperately need this virtual circuit to develop both their craft and their audiences. As the wisdom goes “by rehearsing, you get better at rehearsing but by performing live, you get better at being a live performer”. And the latter is how artists build audiences. Despite the proliferation of distribution and streaming services and the low barriers to making music, artists cannot simply release recordings and grow a fanbase - that is myth. Back in 2004 whe...