Live music won’t fully return until 2022, predicts Marc Geiger, one of the concert industry’s top executives.

Geiger is the former global head of music at talent agency William Morris Entertainment, and co-founder of Lollapalooza festival. Speaking on The Bob Lefsetz Podcast, he gave his prediction on the return of live events after the pandemic – and it was not rosy.

“In my humble opinion, it’s going to be 2022,” Geiger said, as Consequence of Sound notes.

Geiger continued: “It’s going to take that long before, what I call, the germaphobic economy is slowly killed off and replaced by the claustrophobia economy – that’s when people want to get out and go out to dinner and have their lives, go to festivals and shows.”

“It’s my instinct, that’s going to take a while because super-spreader events – sports, shows, festivals, etc. – aren’t going to do too well when the virus is this present.”

He said that there are “probably 20” hurdles that promoters and events organisers will need to get over before live music can return, including “the virus and illness”, “spacing and density”, and the difficulty in getting insurers to cover events when “there’s infinite liability”.

“The next six months may be more painful than the last six months, and maybe the next six months after that are even more so,” he said.

Whether music venues and smaller festivals can survive that long is another matter. Just yesterday in the UK, beloved venues including Manchester’s Gorilla and Deaf Institute, and Hull’s Welly, announced their closure, despite a recently announced government support package for arts venues.

Basically it’s a real bummer. Just not cool at all.

Earlier this year, we spoke to six independent venues struggling for survival during the lockdown – read that here.