The impacts of digital initiatives on musicians during COVID-19: examining the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall

ABSTRACT

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, performance venues worldwide were shuttered, and many arts organisations “pivoted” to digital performance platforms. While existing literature has explored the impact of such strategies on organisations and audiences, there has been limited consideration of the role of digital initiatives in either alleviating or exacerbating the negative impacts of the pandemic on professional classical musicians. This article examines one such initiative, the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall in Australia, and maps the extent to which it may have functioned as a positive intervention for participating musicians during a period of extreme career insecurity. Using survey data from 63 musicians who performed on the platform, I find the initiative partially addressed three negative impacts caused by the pandemic—the losses of work, identity, and community. However, the initiative was unable to counteract a fourth negative impact—the loss of audience—due to its digital format.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• professional musicians
• digital initiatives
• digital pivots‌
• creative and cultural industries

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Caitlin Vincent

Dr. Caitlin Vincent researches the future of work in the arts, with a focus on cultural labour, digital performance, and opera. An award-winning opera librettist, Dr. Vincent has been commissioned by Washington National Opera, the Schubert Club of Minnesota, and the University of Connecticut, amongst others. Her monograph, Digital scenography in opera in the twenty-first century, was published by Routledge in 2021.