Participants at the Experience LIVE recruiting event at Rock Litiz, a production campus in rural Pennsylvania dedicated to live entertainment.
Photographer: Hannah Yoon/Bloomberg
A Booming Live Music Industry Looks for Its Next Generation of Roadies
With concerts now one of music’s main revenue engines, the industry is racing to replace an aging labor pool of skilled engineers, programmers and technicians.
Lasers beam onstage, while Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” blares from the state-of-the-art soundsystem. As the chorus builds, sparks shoot from above and below. From a hidden platform, a brunette woman wearing a leather jacket rises into view, arms raised in triumph. The audience — a young crowd clad mostly in black jeans, band T-shirts and Doc Martens — erupts into cheers.
This, the woman tells the group, is a safe space for weirdos. “We don’t want any a**holes here,” she says, warmly.