CORONAVIRUS. MAREN MORRIS AND HUSBAND RYAN HURD WELCOMED THEIR FIRST CHILD, SON HAYES ANDREW HURD. CURB RECORDS SIGNED COUNTRY SINGER-SONGWRITER HANNAH ELLIS.JUST DAYS AFTER LIVE NATION
and AEG suspended all of their concerts
in North America, over 40,000 people
attended the Vive Latino pop and rock
festival in Mexico City. Both the city’s
mayor and the president of Mexico said
that the concert could go on because the
pandemic was in “phase one.” Around
that time, Colombia closed its borders as
the value of the dollar rocketed by 50%
relative to the Colombian peso.
As the coronavirus ravages the live busi-
ness, Latin American promoters, who rely
on international acts, are preparing to face
another problem: currencies that are falling
relative to the dollar. Although devaluation is
worst in Colombia, most regional currencies
are down, making it costlier to pay U.S. acts.
“Devaluation worsens the situation,” says
Henry Cárdenas, chairman/CEO of CMN,
the largest Latin promoter in the United
States. “I won’t be able to sell any talent in
Colombia in the next months, and Mexico
will be tough too.”The coronavirus came at a time of
growth for the Latin market. For the fourth
straight year, Latin America was the fastest-
growing recorded-music market, up 16.8%
over the previous year, according to IFPI.
That growth fueled the region’s concert
business, too. Promoters and agents are
wary of booking shows in Latin America,
since countries there are taking such
uneven precautions against the coronavirus.
“I’m rescheduling festivals for September
and October,” says a Latin agent, about the
situation in Mexico, “but how will that work
if they’re not taking any measures now?”
When promoters can book shows again,
the value of the dollar means they could
have to charge more for tickets at a time
when consumers can’t afford them. “All
these things,” says the agent, “combine to
make a perfect storm.” —LEILA COBOLow Money,
More Problems
CURRENCY FLUCTUATIONS
ARE FURTHER COMPLICATING
THE LATIN LIVE BUSINESSA
S EUROPE AND THE
United States cope
with spiraling num-
bers of coronavirus
cases, Jim Wong has a message
from China for his Western
counterparts: There’s light at the
end of the tunnel.
For over two months, Wong, the
managing director of Live Nation
Electronic Asia, operated under
a China-wide lockdown that
shuttered Live Nation’s offices in
Hong Kong, where he works, and
Shanghai. The measures, which
were more extensive in main-
land China, not only restricted
everyday life but completely shut
down the live-music business.
Fortunately, they seem to have
contained the virus in China: The
government recently reported no
new locally transmitted cases in a
24-hour period for the first time.
The improved situation allowed
Live Nation — which promotes
about a dozen festivals a year in
China, as well as 600 to 700 club
and theater shows — to reopen
its Hong Kong office early this
month. But that doesn’t mean that
the economic damage in China
won’t be severe, says Wong.
The trade organization China
Association of Performing Arts
(CAPA) said Feb. 20 that over
40% of industry experts — in-cluding venue owners and those
working in film, music and
theater — project that revenue for
the country’s live-music sector
will contract by 50% in 2020.
Wong, who also runs the artist
management company Dancing
Dragon as a joint venture with
Live Nation, says the temporary
shutdown hit China’s nightclub
business especially hard: Inves-
tors overbuilt during the boom,
then got overleveraged to the
point where they couldn’t with-
stand an economic shock. “The
bubble has burst,” he says.
Wong, who rarely gives inter-
views and wasn’t authorized to
speak on behalf of Live Nation,
talked to Billboard to reassure his
counterparts elsewhere that the
situation will turn around. “Every-
one’s panicking and depressed,”
he says of U.S. executives. “But
we’ve been through this. We’ll
come back stronger.”What does the live-music sector in
China look like now?
Right now no club is open yet. They’re
slowly opening very small venues, like
200 to 300 capacity. But for a concert
or a festival or even the nightclubs to
come back, we’re looking at June at
least. ... No one is taking permit ap-
plications, no one is giving you dates
for venues for before August.What does the path out of this
look like?
The path forward is to realize how
fragile the business is, in a way. I think
going forward you have to be a little
bit cautious about your strategy, to
think, [if something like this happens],
how could you survive. [Before, some
people thought], “I’ll be super ag-
gressive and try to open 55 clubs at
the same time.” Now [they] realize, if
something [happens], the 55 clubs are
all going to go out of business.How did your job change during
the outbreak?
What we do every day is book shows
and talk to agents in the U.S. After the
outbreak, we changed completely
because there’s no shows happening.
What do [we] talk about? Creative
stuff: How can we sell tickets better?
How can we help our own artists?Is there any kind of silver lining?
The silver lining is this: A lot of good
music is going to come out after
the virus because artists did a lot of
work when China was locked down.
My gut feeling is that it’s going to be
like a peak [for recorded music] in
China. ... And hopefully there’ll be
hits or new artists that break out
from this. ... My fear is that artists will
soon be announcing 55 tours.Additional reporting by Benson Zhang.THE LIVE-BUSINESS FORECAST FROM
CHINA: THIS TOO SHALL PASS
Experts in China estimate the live sector there will contract by 50% in 2020, but
infection numbers are slowing dramatically and offices are opening again
BY ALEXEI BARRIONUEVOSouth Korean boy band
EXO at Hong Kong’s
AsiaWorld-Expo in 2019.The Vive Latino festival in Mexico City on March 14.NEW ORLEANS BOUNCE DJ BLACK N MILD DIED AT AGE 44 DUE TO THE CORONAVIRUS. AFRICAN JAZZ ARTIST MANU DIBANGO, KNOWN FOR HIS 1972 HIT “SOUL MAKOSSA,” DIED AT AGE 86 DUE TO THEEXO: VISUAL CHINA GROUP/GETTY IMAGES. VIVE LATINO: ALEJANDRO MELENDEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. MASON: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES.18 BILLBOARD • MARCH 28, 20207market_wong_latin_goodworks_lo [P]_27835191.indd 18 3/25/20 5:14 PM