The greater Los Angeles area is struggling with what may become one of the most costly natural disasters in US history and arguably the most devastating natural disaster in the history of California. The Palisades fire, the Eaton fire, and the Hurst fire have, in mere days, ripped through one of the most important entertainment capitals in the world bringing many people who have devoted their life to the creative arts to their knees.
It has been a time of trial for many of my friends in the music industry, and they have been describing their experience to me as “surreal” and “apocalyptic." While it is impossible yet to see what the fallout from this destruction will be, we do know that it will be substantial, and it will affect the entertainment industry immensely…with a significant impact on musicians.
But to understand how devastating these fires are to all the creative professionals affected by them, let’s first understand something important about the music industry in LA specifically:
The Los Angeles wildfires will have an enormous impact on the music industry
There are three main music industry hubs in the USA (four if you include Austin, TX, which I think you should because Texas has become ridiculously important to reinventing the past and remolding the future of country music…and current television—but I will leave it off the list for the purpose of this article).
I am talking about New York City, Nashville, and Los Angeles. I have spent all of 6 days in New York City, a few years in Nashville, and a rather formative chunk of my adult life in LA. I can’t speak much about NYC, I love Nashville, but I am in love with Los Angeles.
What I find extremely fascinating about LA, especially as it pertains to the music industry, is that in spite of all the record labels, music venues, and pop stars that live in LA, the music industry as an active whole still exists largely underground.
Hollywood (i.e. “The Movies”) is without doubt the bright shining star of The City Of Angels to the point that when people think of Los Angeles, they really only think of films. To be frank, LA is the sole golden destination where anyone who aspires to Silver Screen fame and celebrity must go. It is the land of “The Movie Star.”
The film industry is everywhere and means everything to LA with actors publicly bussing tables sat in by screenwriters who were publicly Ubered to that particular restaurant by assistant directors who publicly walk the dogs of interns who publicly do the dirty work for minor execs at Paramount Pictures.
That’s the wild dynamic that anyone who hopes to make it in film must navigate—at least if they want to one day buy their home up in the Hollywood Hills. That is not the wild dynamic for musicians in LA.
LA musicians operate underground and out of sight; in point of fact, the entire record industry operates underground and out of site. There are secret music venues located behind the “employees only” doors at frozen yogurt shops (this is for real).
There are giant Soviet-style apartment buildings turned rehearsal rooms that house hundreds of bands loudly practicing whatever style of music at whatever time of night doing whatever type of semi-stimulating substance (could be Mountain Dew) in the black of night against the backdrop of skid row (this is also for real).
It is cacophonous and electrifying (if not also somewhat terrifying). Everywhere around the LA basin, at all times of night, sweaty and half-deaf musicians will—like zombie factory workers—drag themselves back home to curl up between their Fender Twin Reverb amp, a broken snare drum, some guitar picks, and their cat, only to wake up again that night to play a 45-minute set at The Roxy at 2 am.
But it’s from within these underground and unnoticed rectangular monstrosities of piercingly dissonant sounds that your next favorite band is being born.
When your next favorite band is good enough (although that’s not a requirement), they will again—like zombie factory workers—drag themselves out in the middle of the night to some random house owned by a random friend of the keyboardist who has turned their random guest room into a random recording studio which somehow sounds as magnificent as Abbey Road or any other old school, high priced, historic yet more and more obsolete recording studio.
In Los Angeles, it is in these guest rooms with a beat-up couch in one corner, a computer and a set of moderately priced studio speakers in the other, and used mattresses scientifically placed at specific sonic intersections around the walls that your next favorite band will record your next favorite song and become an "overnight" success. This is how today's music gets made: underground, out of sight, and in people’s homes.
Most every musician I know who works in the music industry today—in any capacity—has a studio in their house or apartment. I’m writing this article sitting in mine surrounded by guitars and microphones and ring lights should I ever get the urge to post something on Tik Tok (which I won’t).
The simple truth is that tens of thousands of musicians and producers are working out of tens of thousands of home studios at any one moment in time, recording massive radio hits, TV Jingles, or blockbuster cinematic movie scores.
Session players are recording instruments remotely from their bedroom hallways (usually for other artists around the world whom they have never even met); drum kits are set up in dining rooms; microphones are strategically placed in closets; bathroom doors are left open to act like reverb chambers and echo plates; sound design and underscore for major motion pictures are being mixed in musician’s garages.
Most people have no idea, but the music creation part of the music industry comes out of people’s homes, so when a fire rips through a major music town like LA and burns houses to the ground, the way we make music burns down with them.
This is exceptionally devastating as professional working musicians make far less income than the average music consumer realizes. It is even more true in our modern era of music streaming platforms driven by large international corporations and highly invested shareholders pumping music out to the far corners of the planet with almost no financial return to the artists who created that music in the first place.
We all love music, and artists love to create music, but it is a costly enterprise. Most working musicians can’t even afford to insure their gear (be it guitars, oboes, or recording equipment), so they work hard to keep everything in good condition, praying nothing happens. Those few musicians who have figured out a way to work consistently in the industry know they walk a precarious financial tightrope as, similar to the rural farm belt of America which is at the mercy of constantly changing weather, the music industry landscape is in a constant state of change, and their livelihood is at its mercy.
What is popular today could be irrelevant in six months; that tour they are headlining this season could be canceled the next. That massively successful hit single they wrote could (and most likely will) never happen again. Even famous stars are perpetually on the edge of “losing it all” because music styles, fans, record labels, and trends are fickle.
The music industry is volatile. In other words, even though today an artist may have a windfall of success, tomorrow could all of a sudden be a dust bowl, and that artist’s career could be over in the blink of an eye…or, as in the case of Los Angeles this month, in the spark of a wildfire.
The fires in LA this month brought widespread devastation. Thousands of professional home studios have burned to the ground; millions of dollars in musical equipment have been lost; many indie record labels will close up shop and drop artists from their rosters.
The truth is, however, I doubt that any music lovers will really even take notice if there are fewer albums released in 2025; no one will ever think that the audio quality of the dialogue or the musical score of the next Marvel movie sounds sort of off; not many people will give a second thought as to why their favorite band isn’t coming to town any time soon. Chances are we won’t be able to audibly “hear” how the music industry has been affected by these fires, so it’s important for us to at least learn about it and understand what has truly been lost.
The livelihoods and opportunities for so many artists and entrepreneurs in the music industry have come to an abrupt end as a result of these wildfires, and for some, they may never be rebuilt. So your new favorite unknown underground band that has been working night and day to make a name for themselves may never again have the opportunity to record their songs and leave their mark on music history. That is a sad loss for all of us.
In response to these wildfires, many organizations such as ASCAP, Warner Music Group, The Black Music Action Coalition, and the LA Philharmonic Orchestra have created funding opportunities to help with wildfire relief efforts. As well as many major artists such as Beyoncé, Metallica, Doja Cat, Maná, and The Eagles have stepped in through some of their foundations to help all of us support and rebuild the Los Angeles music scene—which in turn helps the global music community.
With a longstanding commitment to the musical arts, the Recording Academy (The Grammy Awards) has a foundation called Musicares, which has for years been a massive support network for musicians and music industry professionals in a myriad of ways, including financial, medical, mental health and addiction support.
They are an extremely effective avenue to help with wildfire relief efforts and have many ways in which we can all be involved in supporting the musicians, producers, bands, composers, publicists, songwriters, roadies, and all who have been affected by this devastating natural disaster.