Covid has brought new perspectives on live music

Four guests were present when moderator Mikkel Wad Larsen opened what best can be described as an open discussion on the impacts of covid on the music industry. Mikkel Wad Larsen, Head of Live & International Exploitation at W.A.S. Entertainment, began by saying that we would be discussing a subject that demands much more time than the allotted 45 minutes.

Despite the short amount of time, the panelists touched upon a wide range of topics. The panel consisted of artist and frontwoman of the band A Mess, Dorte Hartmann, Swedish artist Lucky Lo, booker at the venue VEGA, Jeppe Nygaard Christensen, and the English agent Liam Spencer. In other words, there were a multitude of perspectives present to talk about covid’s effect on live music.

The panel started out by reflecting on how they experienced the beginning of covid. What do you do when the world shuts down and your main source of income is live music? They took turns reflecting but there was a clear agreement that covid actually had brought some positives. Dorte Hartmann, for example, believed that she had spent the covid-break positively, as many new possibilities had appeared for her and for her indie rock project A Mess with which she’d been able to film a documentary series amongst other things.

The entire panel agreed that the covid-lockdowns had given them time to stop and reflect on how the music industry could come back stronger. To this end, Mikkel Wad Larsen naturally ended the session by asking the panel, where live music stands now and what the future looks like. Several panelists agreed that covid had left its mark as they found it more difficult to attract audiences than before – particularly older audiences. Of course, the future is hard to predict. Therefore, there wasn’t much that the four panelists dared predict.