Throughout the feature, which you should read in its entirety here, Chugg describes COVID-19 as one of the most devastating events he’s ever seen in his 55 year career in the music industry, a viewpoint which is pretty hard to dispute from any angle. The latest tally on I Lost My Gig stands at a loss of $325 million in income from the Australian entertainment sector, and there’s doubt it’ll continue to crawl upwards as we remain in lockdown.
Chugg also discussed the impact the virus and its accompanying lockdown measures will have upon the international touring market, telling the Sydney Morning Herald that while local acts will be able to bounce back fine, it could be up to a year before any international artists could tour the country, saying “I might be being pessimistic, but the way America and the UK are going… if we clean up the virus here why would you then start letting people in to start it all over again? We might not see any international acts in this country for a year.”
Recently, Chugg Touring teamed up with Frontier, Live Nation and TEG to appeal for a lifeline of $650 million in funding for the music industry, particularly in order to keep small businesses and subcontracting companies afloat during this era. While there are talks of some kind of funding strategy being implemented to assist businesses of this nature, we don’t have our fingers crossed, and at any rate, there’s still hundreds of thousands of artists, bartenders and technicians working in regional areas that are unlikely to reap any reward here.
Read the article in full over at Sydney Morning Herald.