I'm generally of two minds on this; one, I've gotten so much pleasure from live music that I hope it's a viable alternative in the future. And I hope all the people that have made that possible come out of this able to continue what they love. But I also see the other side; I wish I had a job that I got to tour the world and hang with cool musicians and not live the 9-to-5 lifestyle, so it's a trade off. With reward comes risk.
I would like to think the industry as a whole would survive this, and there would be a sort of reckoning in the future. How do we cut out the middle man? How do we make income streams more steady?
One thing I do know for fairly certain: no one is really going to be happy with the changes. We've not seen anything like COVID-19 before, but we certainly have seen these types of industry-disruptive things before, and the outcomes never seem to really satisfy everyone. One way to do it is to organize the back-stage staff into an organization or company (NOT a union!) so that if Johnny Amplifier can't road for Alter Bridge, the service can put them on a P!nk tour or a Mumford and Sons tour. Maybe even coordinate by location or venue, so that they can do a couple shows by multiple tours in a geographic region. That way, we can justify having those people on staff with benefits if the situation warrants. Takes some of the "cowboy" lifestyle out of the equation, and makes it more of a "job", but with that comes upside. With less risk, comes cost.