New York City’s live music industry perseveres amidst lasting COVID concerns
New York City’s live music industry has fully returned despite lasting concerns of COVID transmission, adding revenue to the city’s nightlife economy and indicating a return to pre-pandemic life.
Rosanna Herrera, 19, anxiously stood in line outside the 7th Avenue entrance of Madison Square Garden one night in early October with four sets of masks across her face, three surgical and one cloth. Inside her purse she carried a small bottle of hand sanitizer and her vaccine card. She was also scheduled for a COVID test both two days and one week after that day — the opening night of Harry Styles’s short series of New York City shows.
Were it not for the randomized temperature checks or the required proof of vaccination, the outside of the Madison Square Garden would have looked almost exactly like it did prior to early March 2020: packed with thousands of adoring fans.
The onset of COVID-19 caused concerts in New York and across the country to come to a halt, as worried music fans retracted into the safety of their homes and venues shut down. But after a year of stagnation, live music has returned, giving New Yorkers a taste of their pre-pandemic lives. And for the live music industry — a critical part of the city’s nightlife economy — venue reopenings mean a return to business as usual.
But as the city continues to ease nightlife restrictions, the threat of COVID remains. The intimacy of concerts makes social distancing difficult and raises the chance of transmission. Still, that hasn’t stopped fans from once again fully experiencing the joy of live music.
Violette Furton, 27, a sound engineer at a small venue in Bushwick, was mostly unconcerned about her safety when she returned to work at the beginning of July. She had antibodies from having caught COVID earlier during the pandemic, was fully vaccinated and as in most places in the city, her place of employment requires attendees to wear masks and show proof of vaccination.
Yet amidst the chaos of NYC nightlife, that isn’t always the case. “The venue kind of seems to escape the trappings of a pandemic-influenced operation style,” says Furton, recalling instances of maskless crowds and lax vaccination checks for venue staff. “I think this is sort of like an honor system.”
Still, improved vaccination rates in the city — 67% full vaccination citywide, with a declining daily positivity rate of 2.09% — give Furton a peace of mind. And for the most part, going to work these days feels just like old times.
“That’s just kind of the reality where the nightlife microcosm is going to exist, you know, in tandem with or in spite of whatever COVID precautions are legally implicated,” says Furton. “I think it’s that one industry that doesn’t necessarily get too hung up on that, which is kind of a double-edged sword.”
In New York, the live music scene has been back since the beginning of the summer. Central Park held its annual SummerStage festival, and the city held a large homecoming concert to celebrate its reopening. While public health concerns persist, there are no doubts that the reemergence of concerts has given the city’s economy a boost, once more attracting tourists with promises of stellar live entertainment.
“If you think about the way we spend money living in a city, we make money in the city and we spend it in the city,” says Carlos Chirinos, a professor of music business at New York University. “But when people from outside come and bring dollars from outside the city, they are bringing surplus. […] All of that money was not produced in this state, so that is a very important influx to the local economy.”
The stream of tourists returning to the city has not only helped the economy, but has also played an important role in keeping local venues afloat, Chirinos added, demonstrating the resiliency of the music industry.
“As long as the pandemic comes to an end, the live music industry will probably come back,” says Chirinos. “Probably stronger, because there is kind of a gap in the experience and there is a global appetite for quality experiences.”
NYU Tisch student Dassel Jheong, 19, says that the pandemic motivated him to experience more live music. Since the beginning of the summer, he has attended over seven shows — both in his home state of California and in the city. They’re a place for him to find creativity and feel inspired by the cathartic experiences he witnesses.
“As a film major, [going to concerts] just helps me to imagine scenes or process things,” says Jheong. “And a lot of the stuff that I’m working on has to do with musicality, or people experiencing music. And just observing them helps to see that.”
The threat of COVID-19 remains alive and well in Jheong’s mind — he is especially concerned about the emergence of fake vaccine cards — but he believes that the return of concerts was right on time. It has given music fans something to bond over during difficult times.
Jheong still perfectly recalls the words of The Flaming Lips frontman, Wayne Coyne, at their summer show in Costa Mesa, CA: “‘‘Even if you don’t feel like it, just try to dance […] and be happy. The person next to you might have come here really wanting to feel something for once in a long time, and you might help them to feel that.’”
