If you were a young person thinking about a career in live-event audio, you’d have a lot to consider. First, like many other career choices in music and technology, the apprenticeship model, while still somewhat more viable for live audio than, say, becoming a lawyer, is nonetheless giving way to a more specifically academic path.
In many ways, that’s a good thing: the reality is that live sound in the modern entertainment industry is far more multifaceted than ever, and the wider range of knowledge needed to succeed, including live recording and editing skills, understanding of acoustics, and a practical knowledge of digital networking, increasingly make a formal academic environment a better way to learn and integrate all that know-how.
On the other hand, anyone going to any kind of professional audio academy is going to have to be equally aware of how the economics of the business are changing. Broad collegiate audio curricula have become expensive propositions in recent years, with two-year degrees costing as much as $45,000, and more for four-year programs. Even stand-alone programs that focus tightly on live sound can cost as much as $10,000 for certificates of completion.
What’s more, in an environment today when the value of any college education is being called into question in ways that would have been considered heresy a decade ago, tuition costs have to be weighed against projected career earnings. That’s one thing if you’re going into law or medicine (and even then…), but reliable projected numbers are fuzzier for FOH mixers. There’s some guidance from the Labor Department’s U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, where the most recent set of numbers for the admittedly broad category of “Broadcast and Sound Engineering Technicians” (whose functions the Bureau describes rather comprehensively as to “set up, operate, and maintain the electrical equipment for radio and television broadcasts, concerts, sound recordings, and movies and in office and school buildings”) suggests that, as of 2010, people working in that category were earning an average of $38,970 per year, which works out to $19.17 per hour. That increased in 2011 to $26.98 per hour and $56,110 annually. You made more if you lived in New York or Los Angeles, less if you lived in, say, Kansas City or, more ominously, Nashville, putatively the country’s touring locus.
Staying Current
Some good news is the broader spectrum of alternative educational opportunities now available. Manufacturers, in particular, are offering more, and a greater range of, combined training/marketing events. There are more products, and makers of those products, than ever in the live-sound marketplace, and for them, education-themed events are opportunities for branding. Sennheiser’s highly focused workshops are a good example. Last month, the company’s Sound Academy education initiative held a seminar on wireless RF in New York City. Successful completion also gave attendees six InfoComm Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) credits, and the seminar fee of $199 was mitigated by a $50 rebate on Sennheiser and Neumann products. A more comprehensive live-sound seminar at Winter NAMM cost $498 for two days of intensive learning. Harman’s Soundcraft has been sponsoring workshops around the U.S. as part of its “Mixing With Professionals” program, like the one last May in New York with veteran FOH engineer Monty Lee Wilkes.
The jump in the number of manufacturers in the live sound sector means that they have had to become more proactive about product and brand differentiation. That’s translated into greater presence at trade shows like InfoComm, AES and NAMM, and more standalone invitational types of events in more cities across the country, and thus more opportunities for mixers for familiarization with new equipment and concepts. (And it’s worth bearing in mind that this comes with substantial costs for those manufacturers, since lugging a line array and/or a console around, or even renting your own gear regionally, is more expensive than, say, a trade show booth demonstrating a plug-in.)
Yamaha’s Audioversity program, which took place at Atlanta’s Cobb Galleria Centre Aug. 1-2, covered the specifics relating to its CL Digital Mixers but also included more generic topics such as proper word clock distribution. Marc Lopez, marketing manager for commercial audio at Yamaha, sees such events as filling in gaps in the knowledge base. The gaps are real. He says too many academic graduates or students showing up for these live-sound seminars display varying levels of knowledge about studio environments but are woefully uninformed when it comes to live-sound basics. In fact, he says, “Yamaha has shifted its focus as a company from recording to live sound in the last several years because there has been a shift in the larger music business in that direction.” But the curriculum for it apparently has not caught up to that yet.
Looking Forward
There are more employment opportunities in live sound than ever before, a collateral effect of the music industry’s transition from a recorded-music sales model to a live-concert one. However, recent data also suggest that the industry is subject to the same Moore’s Law effect that plagues all things digital. While Pollstar’s mid-year report states that the Top 100 Tours in North America generated a combined gross of $1.12 billion, up 1.2 percent over last year, average concert ticket prices dropped $6.34, or 9.4 percent, to $60.68, the lowest since 2007. Overall gross sales were up even as unit ticket prices went down because there were simply more shows last year — Pollstar’s data indicate a 17.4 percent jump in the number of markets, or 420 additional venues played over 2011.
More shows, more venues, ticket prices trending lower. That’s a calculus that should be regarded as a warning about the need for promoters and acts to drop overhead costs in coming years. Mixer salaries are part of that overhead — although there may be some salary protection stemming from the common practice of “doubling-up,” where FOH engineers also handling other chores such as production or tour management; monitor mixers are also doing RF coordination and other tasks.
It’s a good idea to remember that the music industry as a whole is going through a massive transformation, the full scope of which will only be clearly visible in the rear-view mirror. Who would have thought 10 years ago that a computer company would offer the record industry its best hope? A mixer’s best hope in this changing environment would be to take advantage of as many educational opportunities that are feasible and affordable, and be constantly on the lookout for how your skills will fit into a changing landscape.
