At the beginning of the pandemic, Sofar Sounds — which has made a name and a business for itself by staging “secret gigs and intimate concerts” featuring emerging artists for an invited, engaged audience — seemed to be one of the worst-positioned businesses in the music industry to survive it: many of its shows take place in people’s homes. Yet not only did they come through the pandemic intact, they hosted multiple livestreams and even says it managed to pay some 3,000 artists whose scheduled shows were canceled due to lockdown, paying out more than $1.5 million to artists over the course of the pandemic. And after a low-key, year-long ramping up, they’re now hosting more shows than ever and have added an array of artist services.
“Obviously, we were hit hard — but artists were really hit hard,” says CEO Jim Lucchese, who joined the company in February of 2019. “We surveyed them and found that over 70% of them lost more than half of money that they were making, and more than 90% lost almost all their all their gigs, obviously, and didn’t get paid. We had 3,000 artists that that we had to cancel.
“So sent them a note and originally said, ‘Here’s the money for your shows, what we typically pay, consider it an advance,’ thinking we’d be back in a few months. But as things dragged on, we just said, ‘Keep that keep that money as a grant, basically.” It also launched a formal grant program for artists.
The company managed to stay solvent through its Listening Room livestreamed concerts (where artists kept 100% of the donations, averaging around $450) and through investors and sponsors, but also by expanding into artist services, which Lucchese had been planning well before the pandemic.
In February of 2021, Sofar acquired Seated, an artist services company offeringtouring artists with tools and services to directly connect with fans via its listings tool to promote their non-Sofar shows and merch. It also expanded its livestreamed offerings to include more bespoke options and VIP packages — during the pandemic, those took the form of everything from virtual birthday parties to corporate team-building events.
“The listings are a self-serve tool, but what we call “Fan Rewards” and VIP experiences are not,” Lucchese says. “This is operationally hands-on, where we work with the artists and managers to create custom VIP experiences, and then build a bit of tech and provide services to bring those to life. That can be anything from early access to tickets to a meet-and-greet or a fully bespoke fan experience.”
While it has done so relatively quietly, the company has moved those expansions into the real world since the pandemic lifted, experimenting with different (and higher-paying) show formats beyond its usual template of three artists playing 20-25 minute sets in non-traditional spaces. The company expects to stage 10,000 shows in around 400 cities by the end of 2023.
Since the pandemic, Sofar says it has directly paid artists more than $30 million for performing at Sofar shows and running fan reward or VIP campaigns through the company.
Lucchese says, “Now that we hopefully have the pandemic in the rear view, we still we have a vibrant concerts business that’s back and larger than it was at any time.”
