These are unprecedented times for everyone, and that is definitely no exception to musicians. Many musicians depend on live performances as a substantial portion of their income, and in a time where such a thing is a massive health hazard, the music industry had no choice but to get creative. One of the most common responses to the live concert prohibition is a great increase in the popularity of livestreamed concerts. Musicians thankfully have a lot of options with this direction, some putting their livestream behind a paywall, similar to paying for tickets to a real concert, and others simply giving out free online concerts, and welcoming donations of any size from the viewers. Luckily, it’s only become easier to livestream over the years, and anyone from a band playing in a garage, to a local jazz club (Hermann’s is doing a great job!) to huge music festivals such as Lollapalooza and Rolling Loud can make their show available to anyone from the comfort of their homes. Although this method of performance often returns a much smaller profit than live concerts, there are many other ways musicians are turning a profit in 2020. One common way is through merch. Nearly every artist I listen to and is still working to this day has some form of a merch website, and services such as Shopify and Squarespace have made the process of creating an online store extremely easy. The artist I believe has pushed the merchandise game to almost depressing heights is rapper Travis Scott, who in the last 3 months has dropped no less than half a dozen collections of branded clothing and accessories, partnering with companies such as Playstation and McDonalds to sell sponsored atrocities only possible through a painfully consumerist society, such as a $90, 3-foot-long chicken nugget body pillow, which unsurprisingly sold out very quickly if for nothing more than the novelty. But this extreme example is besides the point, any musician with a knack for graphic design (or who knows someone that does) can easily put together a nice t-shirt design that their fans can connect to, and there are more than enough resources on the internet to help along the way.