On Sunday, March 22, at 8pm, the state of New York shut down, governor’s orders. Here in the Big City, most stores are closed—even Starbucks, or at least the ones near me. In my neighborhood, up on Broadway, a grocery store is open, and a drugstore, a hardware store, and a couple of bodegas. Some bars and restaurants are open for takeout only, some advertising COCKTAILS TO GO in big black letters painted on bedsheets—New Orleans comes to NYC. (Meanwhile, New Orleans itself, also a coronavirus hotspot, apparently is desolate, the bars closed, a hard thing to picture.)
Here in the city, they’ve shut down the music venues: the Metropolitan Opera, the Village Vanguard, the 92nd Street Y, Carnegie Hall, the jazz club Smoke just down the street—all of them. I miss live music. But I’ve got my stereo, a fine record collection, and subscriptions to Qobuz and Tidal. My family is with me at home, all virus-free. We have food and toilet paper.
It’s impossible to guess what the world will look like even a few weeks out, when this issue hits newsstands and mailboxes, let alone in a few years. As I write this, a week before this issue goes to press, US COVID-19 fatalities have surpassed 4000. That number will go much higher (footnote 1). Doctors say New York hospitals may be overwhelmed soon. There’s already a satellite hospital in Central Park and a hospital ship in New York Harbor. They don’t have enough ventilators or protective equipment—something medical personnel could count on even in west Africa during the Ebola plague.
Beyond its impact on life and health, this disease has had a profound economic impact. This morning, the government announced record unemployment claims—five times the previous record. Vast swaths of the population are in serious financial peril: cooks, waiters, pilots, flight attendants, many retail workers. In high-rent NYC, a missed paycheck could mean hunger and homelessness for waiters, bartenders, store clerks.
At a time like this, anything I write risks seeming trite, or tone-deaf, or worse. It may someday seem strange that we kept publishing a magazine about music and expensive electronics when the world was on fire. But Stereophile remains relevant: What could be better suited to times such as these than a magazine about staying at home and listening to music? This hobby provides a release. Music offers solace. We’ll keep doing what we do. Let history render its verdict.
Operationally, we’re fine. Stereophile‘s operations are mostly immune to the kinds of problems many workers face. Not entirely, because audio companies are not immune. In the short term, as manufacturers go dark to wait out the crisis, review samples will become harder to obtain. Yet, those companies are resourceful—most of them anyway—and so are we, and since we work a few months ahead, we’ll be okay. And if the supply of review components is throttled, we’ll substitute other kinds of articles. It’ll be good, I promise.
One thing I’m sure of: When the virus and the resulting economic havoc have begun to subside, Stereophile will still be here, doing whatever we can to support our readers, this hobby, and this industry.
In difficult times, it helps to think about others. One hard-hit group—one dear to our hearts—is the people who make the music we love. These days, musicians earn most of their money from live performances, and as I already wrote, the venues are shut down. Apparently, nobody’s recording music now, either: “I really don’t know of any [recording sessions] that are going on,” recording engineer Jim Anderson, who records Patricia Barber and many others, wrote to me in a recent email. (Studio folks have been affected too, of course.)
How can we give back—how can we help musicians? If you have tickets to a canceled concert or concert series, don’t take the refund. Donate it back. Some venues are using such donations to pay musicians to perform to empty auditoriums, streaming concerts online while soliciting donations for musician relief. The Americana Highways “Live Music from the Quarantine” series is one example; Google it, enjoy it, give. We’ve posted a list of live-stream concert series online.
If there’s a particular musician you care about—not Bruce or Bono but someone who’s likely to be struggling—track them down on the Internet or social media. Many have PayPal or Venmo accounts you can transfer money into.
When I wrote this, Amazon had stopped filling record and CD orders—but you can still buy music online. The big vinyl-focused stores, including the ones that advertise in Stereophile, are still filling orders: Trust me, I’ve done the experiment. Many brick-and-mortar record stores are filling Internet orders; your order improves the odds that they’ll open back up when this is all over. Discogs is still running, providing an online platform for small retailers. And while you’re shopping, maybe pull the trigger on that new amplifier, or turntable, or phono cartridge you’ve been considering; if this plague shows anything, it’s that we only live once.
Downloads help musicians, too, and with downloads there’s no risk of infection. If you haven’t explored Bandcamp yet, this is a good time to do it: Every genre is represented, from acid to zydeco, and many of the musicians are on the economic margins and so need your help. You can listen before you buy. Bandcamp downloads are cheap, but you’re invited to pay more than the minimum. So, find an artist or 12 who look interesting, take a chance on some new music, and pay generously.
Finally, contribute to a musician-relief fund. We’ve posted a list of such programs online.—Jim Austin
Footnote 1: Daily updated statistics on COVID-19 infections, recoveries, and deaths, broken down by country and US states, can be found here.—Ed.
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