It’s a tough economic time for music, but if you have to be in that business, live music is where you want to be. While the overall U.S. music industry can expect to see annual growth of just over 1 percent through 2017, according to a recently released PricewaterhouseCoopers industry analysis, the report projects that the concert business will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 3 percent through the same period. In other words, live-performance music revenues are projected to be triple those of the music industry as a whole going forward.
PwC set the value of last year’s U.S. concert business at $8.61 billion and forecast growth to $8.9 billion this year and $9.2 billion in 2014; its projections out four more years would bring it to more than $10.3 billion.
(Assuming, I guess, that Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Sting are not all in assisted living by then.)
Not surprisingly, there’s been growth in the pro audio education sector around this. Several of the largest for-profit technical schools specializing in pro audio report steady increases in both the number of students choosing live-sound/live-event majors and in their infrastructure investment around those specialties: The Conservatory of
Recording Arts & Sciences near Phoenix reports that 15 percent of its students now choose a sound reinforcement major, versus 9 percent a few years earlier, and Full Sail’s Show Production B.Sci. degree program takes place in the campus’ 2.2-acre Full Sail Live venue built largely for that major.
Blackbird Academy Takes Flight
Now Blackbird Studios, Nashville’s largest recording complex, which three months ago announced that it was starting its own pro audio school, has included live sound in that curriculum. The idea of commercial recording studios launching their own schools has been around for a while, often accompanied by the inference that it’s intended to replace declining recording revenues, not a huge leap of logic given the arc of recorded music over the last decade. In fact, another significant Nashville facility did just that nearly two years ago when Dark Horse Recording opened its own school on its premises, and New York facility Area 51 Studios announced its own education operation in June. The inclusion of live sound at The Blackbird Academy, as the school is known, might seem opportunistic given the recent ascendancy of live music but makes eminent sense when you realize that its founder and owner, John McBride, originally came from that sector as the proprietor of SR provider MD Systems, which merged with Clair Brothers Sound (now Clair Global) in 1997, and as the FOH mixer for his wife, country superstar Martina McBride, a role he still plays.
The Blackbird Academy’s live-sound program, which begins in January 2014, is ambitious: a 24-week, 720-hour intensive program with classes meeting five days a week. It’s intended to cover all of the major live-sound verticals, from arena shows to clubs to houses of worship. The live-sound program will accommodate a total of up to 80 students a year, who will pay $21,900 each. Unlike the recording program, though, which will leverage what is unarguably a world-class studio in the world’s capital of ensemble recording, The Blackbird Academy’s live-production facilities are being set up in a warehouse across the street from Clair’s Nashville operation, where McBride remains the senior executive. The synergy is clear: Clair Global will provide the school a rotating array of sound equipment from its inventory of consoles, line arrays and other gear, refreshed as new models come out. In fact, Clair Global is a collaborator in the venture — though as Kevin Becka, co-director of education at The Blackbird Academy and an instructor there carefully points out, not a partner in it — and plans to consider the best of its graduates as potential employees.
“It’s a powerful association,” says Becka, who adds that no school can guarantee post-graduate placement. But the combination of McBride’s credentials in the touring business — in addition to FOH for Martina, he was production manager for Garth Brooks in the 1990s — the Clair connection and Nashville’s status as ground zero for the national touring business make The Blackbird Academy’s bid a serious contender.
Template for the Future?
Live sound is an area that more schools are going to have to address, and unlike teaching music production and engineering, which can, in a pinch, be done (though not well) on a laptop and a pair of headphones, teaching live-sound production means you have to move some serious air. That’s a much more significant barrier of entry to the business of education than music production ever had to face. In fact, the proliferation of pro audio schools and programs in recent years has as much to do with the relative ease of teaching it in a digital in-the-box domain as it does with the tarnished but still-powerful allure of the music business itself. The level of investment needed to create an effective learning environment, one with line arrays and banks of amplifiers weighing thousands of pounds and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, suggests that the growth of live-sound education may be considerably slower, and limited to a much smaller cohort, than that of its in-studio counterpart, at a time when the need for well-trained entry-level workers will likely accelerate, if PwC’s analysis holds up.
But besides the cost of getting into this game, there is also a perceptual issue, one that has relegated the art and science of live sound to a secondary position in many minds. “It’s a fairly big hole in pro audio education… and it blows my mind,” Becka fulminates. “That’s why we’re jumping in.” Bill Crabtree, interim chair of MTSU’s Department of Recording Industry, amplifies that, stating, “Live sound has become the more likely career path for anyone going into pro audio now.”
The upside is that that scarcity creates the potential for a faster return on that significantly higher investment. Not every school will have the connection that The Blackbird Academy does with a major player like Clair. And the combination of a potential of $1.75 million per annum in tuition without havingto buy a single line array or a console is like winning the lottery in this case, even with the investment in infrastructure such as trusses and power distribution they’re making. However, this provides a useful template that other SR suppliers and schools can consider, by partnering with each other to create similar synergies. This could accelerate the development of a needed live-sound education infrastructure while also controlling start-up costs, savings that hopefully will be passed along to students in the form of affordable tuition costs. Because while the live sound business needs well-trained entry-level workers, it doesn’t need them deeply in debt from day one.
