How soon is too soon for concerts to return?

Starting to feel like you’re missing something in your life? It’s concerts. Though the return of concerts is most likely further out than we think.

For concerts to return, certain measures designed to fight against the coronavirus must be met. Meanwhile, many health officials are advising against moving too fast with mass gatherings returning.

The government has decided to slowly reintegrate businesses back to normalcy starting as early as next month. There won’t be a sudden moment of everything going back to the way it was at one time.

As this prolonged standstill continues, the question remains: will the music industry ever be the same?

Concert revenues were headed for new heights this year. Once stay-at-home orders were put in place, everything came crashing down.

Questions still remain about the safety of concerts. Considering there are mass amounts of people, cruise-based shows, confined spaces, etc. it doesn’t seem like the best idea at this point in time.

“Larger gatherings — conferences, concerts, sporting events — when people say they’re going to reschedule this conference or graduation event for October 2020, I have no idea how they think that’s a plausible possibility,” Zeke Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, told The New York Times Magazine. “I think those things will be the last to return. Realistically, we’re talking fall 2021, at the earliest.”

But, who is to say when people will really be ready to return to events such as those described above. Attitudes towards concerts have even shifted. Many have reported they are holding off on buying tickets till COVID-19 dies down.

While others have stopped buying completely because they no longer want to attend something where there is a mass gathering. So should concerts return?

For now, streaming concerts will remain the new normal, while concertgoers are left in a kind of musical purgatory. In the meantime, a growing number of experts argue that we should be prepared to experience a lengthy wait before much of this is resolved.