Finish until next spring

Musicians go to labor exchange

The Institute of Musical Initiatives launched the Labor Exchange on his website (section "Specialists") for authors of songs, producers, performers and sound engineers. How it works and why it is important, explains the chief editor of “them. Zhurnala” Maxim Dinkevich.

Maxim Dinkevich

The chief editor "Mi.

-Thousands of people engaged in the entertainment industry were left without earnings due to pandemic. Artists and those who work with them may be worse than many of those who have hit the crisis. Most of the musicians, sleeping children and sound engineers are self -employed, they do not receive salaries during the pandemic.

Many will be able to return to a full -fledged concert life, according to experts.

I hope that local concerts will begin to return in the summer, but in full the event industry will probably earn, not earlier than the next spring. And this means that all these months are artists and those who worked with them will sit almost without money.

We decided to help them try to reduce employers and applicants. To do this, a special section was opened on the site with a portfolio of authors of songs, producers, performers, sound engineers. All the applications that send us are passing through professional experts in the relevant area. We just started, and there are already more than a hundred applications, and they continue to arrive.

Where to get vacancies from? Yes, there are no concerts, most of the studios are closed, but, say, the production of advertising has not been stopped, although the market has narrowed strongly.

And there is music in advertising and someone should write it. Television works, YouTube channels work, and any video product needs soundtrack. Someone must debug a sound, reduce tracks, teach authors of songs sitting in self-isolation, how to record music remotely.

Many of our applicants give lessons in the zoom or skype, this is also in demand. In addition, the section with a portfolio of specialists will work and develop even after quarantine ends. In particular, we plan to expand the list of professions whose representatives will be presented in our project.

It is extremely important for us that industry representatives from different cities can find work, as well as adequately assess the cost of the services that they offer.

For most independent musicians, performances are perhaps the only type of earnings. The specificity of this segment is such that even if the musician has a second profession, most often it is also associated with music. One Moscow Indie singer, quite famous, in addition to performances, wrote music for performances, but now they are not either.

The same is the same with the Belarusian singer Svetlana Ben from the “silver wedding” or with a gaining momentum by the “Loop of Brushes” group (tours around the country, invitation to Urgant). The musicians "loops" relatively recently quit their main work in order to engage exclusively with music. But then the pandemic began, and the plans collapsed.

Abroad, the situation is no better-recently New York Times wrote about concert technicians and tour managers Kiss, Bon Jovi and other stars that have left without work for many months. People complained that their skills were in demand only in the tours, so today they are ready to go almost to the waiters to survive.

One familiar musician went to work as a courier in Yandex.Dad, another work for him is not now.

I do not think that after such a shift he will have the strength to take up the guitar.

Everyone has one task now - to hold out. And ideally, hold out in such a way as to stay in the profession. The pandemic will end sooner or later, and everyone wants music, and someone should play it.