Market report: Sound engineers
Presidents of the USA launch the Mackie DLM series of speakers in Seattle in 2012. The sound engineer mixed the gig while standing in the middle of the audience, using an iPad tablet to run the DL1608 mixer remotely
Mixing it up
Live sound engineers are continuing to diversify into corporate and non-performance activities, although music events remain an important source of work. David Davies assesses a market report that evinces considerable consistency from last year
NOW IN its fourth year, the engineers’ survey has tracked our trusty FOH (and monitor!) people through a period of significant change. Two years after the economic downturn began, the first survey reflected
E1: ORIGIN OF RESPONDENTS
UK........................52% Belgium.................16% Denmark...............16% Ireland ....................4% Slovenia..................4% Sweden...................4% Switzerland ............4%
18 l PSNLIVE 2013
an industry still performing strongly but without the lustre of the booming early Noughties. By 2012 – when a pattern of event cancellations was more firmly established – the sense of a more unsettled sector had
solidified, although in general most engineers were busy and reasonably content. This impression is continued in 2013, with pay rates tending to remain consistent (no great surprise there given the wider economy) but, once again, only a tiny percentage of engineers predicting a decline in their overall workloads. Perhaps this is because they have been so conscious of maintaining diverse workloads; alongside live music and theatre, fixed install, conference and corporate work looms ever- larger on their radars. Engineers from key live sound
markets the UK, Belgium and Denmark constituted the lion’s share of respondents. A full breakdown can be seen in Graph E1.
E2: FORECASTS OF WORKLOAD IN FULL CALENDAR YEAR 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Increase Decrease Stay the same
Non-performance activities – corporate events, conferences and the like – continue to grow in importance to sound engineers
CORE MARKET DATA In many ways, the results of the 2013 poll provide a close echo of its immediate predecessor. This trend is evident from the first question, relating to live sound
engineers’ forecasts of workload in full calendar year 2013. As in 2012, 44% of engineers predicted an increase, with a mere 12% (vs 16% last year) forecasting a decline (Graph E2).
www.psneurope.com
2010 2011 2012 2013
% of respondents
t
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