Covid-19 Effect on Music and Musician
Artist Voices
Smaller artists who were just getting their start when the pandemic hit really took a hit because they weren't able to get their music out there as much and promote it. The study COVID-19 and New Forms of Inequality for Young Music-Makers, "Then I even did a live stream concert for a scene from Antena3 but I thought it was terrible, it’s very strange to give a concert for people you’re not seeing and on top of that it was through their mobile phone, their Instagram…today we all live from that and nobody lives on music for selling albums, or selling yourself on social networks or good luck…it’s super different and on stage it’s a different mindset. (Singer and musician, Portugal)
On the other hand, a lot of artists found the time away from outside influence a great way to focus on creating new music, and they were still able to collaborate with other artists but also take the time to reach out to fans for inspiration. This is where a new kind of music is made, in these smaller oral folk groups collaborating together in a time of panic to create something beautiful to distract from what's going on in the world. The article, COVID-19 and New Forms of Inequality for Young Music-Makers and artist states "It’s definitely given us a bit of time to re-evaluate what, you know, what we need to do and what the kinda most important things we need to do as a band are. I guess how to engage our fans and connect with our fans a little bit more, which has probably been one of the most important parts in learning how to engage with our online database and make sure that when we do go back to touring that they will come and watch shows and still be a part of the band. (Bass player, Australia)". and because they were able to create the online folk groups a lot of artists grew in their music with their fans.
It's not surprising that musicians still found a way to be collaborative since it's such a big part of the folk culture of the music industry as a whole, the creative collaborative. According to the results of Collaborating in Isolation: Assessing the Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Patterns of Collaborative Behavior Among Working Musicians they found that "We believed that collaboration may have changed substantially because the Covid-19 pandemic directly interfered with the structures that normally enable collaboration, particularly in-person group congregant settings. This imposed a significant barrier to continuing collaborating as usual, which was borne out by the drop in collaborative behaviors during the first month of the pandemic. However, our finding that music-makers' collaborative practice rebounded during the pandemic itself implies that musicians are willing to commit a substantial quantity of resources to preserving their normal collaboration habits; this effect also appeared in the interviews, where participants consistently described the investments they and others in their artistic communities made to continue making music with each other, rather than just by themselves.". This goes to show the strong culture of collaborative music there is in the music industry.
Folklore within Fandoms
A lot of bigger artists have large fan bases sometimes referred to as "fandoms". Within these fandoms, there can be folklore about the artist and suspicions fans may have on them as people or about their life. Some people like to come together to discuss and analyze the artist's music. This is a folk group because they all come together for one reason and artists to discuss their oral performances. A concert, in theory, is a lot of people from this artist folk group excited to experience a customary performance from this musician that brought them all together.