This summer's live concerts in a wide variety of genres had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, and billions of dollars were lost along with tens of thousands of jobs.
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It's hard to imagine a scene that's more conducive to the spread of COVID-19 than a concert.
"Singing, shouting, being close together, it increases the spread," said Dave Brooks, who covers the industry for Billboard Magazine. "It's dangerous."
Venues shut down as a result, and the concert business stands to lose as much as $9 billion this summer.
But Brooks sees a ray of hope.
"I also hear from my sources a lot of ideas and a lot of trying to figure out what the future looks like," he said.
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One futuristic solution is Micrashell, described by Billboard as a "wild Hazmat suit designed for clubbing."
"When you have one model that collapses, it's time for a new model to come in and take its place," violinist Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger said.
She is married to Mike Einziger from the group Incubus, and together, the couple developed a new technology called Mixhalo that allows music to be fed directly from a mixing board at any event directly to your cellphone using a proprietary Wi-Fi system.
"The entire live entertainment industry is trying to re-invent itself and try to figure out ways to provide safe entertainment for people," he said.
And what's cool became essential when concerts were canceled.
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"It allows people to be in their perfectly socially distanced car pod and listen to pristine, sound board quality audio," Simpson-Einziger said.
Keith Urban staged a drive-in concert recently for Tennessee health care workers and posted about it on YouTube. He used FM radio, but in situations like this, Mixhalo would work well.
And Simpson-Einziger remains optimistic.
"The desire of fans to hear their favorite musicians, the desire of musicians to share their music in a live community way, will never go away," she said.
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