We first asked this question in 2016, then again in 2018 and now in 2021. In this article, we compare the results from the three polls and see how the profile of Pro Tools users has changed over the last five years.

The Effects Of The Covid Pandemic And Home Working

With the pandemic, we would expect the numbers working from home to have increased, with the fairly universal move around the world to working from home if possible. That said, fairly soon the post-production industry in the US got ‘necessary business’ status, which may mean the number of people working at home might not be as high as we might expect. So let’s take a look by starting with the data from each individual answer and see how things have changed…

Looking at this data, the percentage of home-based full-time post-production people has jumped up by 23% compared to 2018. But looking at the commercial studios covering all aspects of audio post-production group, that dropped by 6% compared to 2018, which does reflect the changes we expected for a shift to home-based working as a result of the pandemic.

What Type Of Pro Tools User Are You - Music

Next, we are going to look at numbers based purely on the type of Pro Tools user. Let’s start with the music sector, where you work and much of your income is from music…

Interestingly, we haven’t seen a similar shift in music production, in fact, the home-based full-time professionals have dropped by 8% compared to 2018 and the home-based music hobbyists dropping by 15%.

It is not possible to say whether this is a drop in disposable income, but we suspect that this shows that our Pro Tools community profile and possibly the Pro Tools userbase, in general, has shifted away from Pro Tools for music production.

What Type Of Pro Tools User Are You - Post-Production

Now let’s do the same for people working in post-production…

These reflect the results we highlighted in the individual results at the start of this article showing an increase in home-based working for all three categories with a small reduction in people working in commercial facilities. It could also suggest that there are more people working in post-production across the board because we don’t see a matching reduction to people working in commercial facilities compared to the increase of working from home.

What Type Of Pro Tools User Are You - Music And Post

For completeness, let’s combine the two sectors together…

What About Commercial Facilities, Has Anything Changed?

More than half of those still working in commercial facilities indicated that they were working in post-production with 16% telling us that you make a living from Pro Tools back in 2016, with 18.5% in 2018 and 18% in 2021.

Moving onto commercial music studios, in 2016, 13% of you told us that you were now making a living from recording and mixing music in a commercial facility compared to 11% in 2018 and 11% in 2021.

This would appear to show that the percentage of Pro Tools users working in commercial facilities has not dropped since 2018, but the percentage working from home in post-production has gone up.

What Has Changed Since 2018?

So what changes have we seen since 2018? In the music sector the percentages of Pro Tools users earning some or all of their income, whether from home or working on a commercial studio has not really changed from 2018 to 2021. The only change in the last 3 years is a reduction in the percentage of hobbyists using Pro Tools.

In audio post-production, as we have already mentioned, there has been an increase in the percentage of Pro Tools users who earn some or all of their income work from home, but interesting the reduction in those working in a commercial facility has not dropped by a corresponding amount.

There is no doubt then that the cottage-isation of our industry continues to develop in both the post-production sector of our industry, almost certainly fueled by the changes to working practices brought on by the pandemic, whereas the small drops in Pro Tools users working in the music sector is more likely to be due to a move away from Pro Tools to other DAWs.

For more on the pros and cons of working from home check out our article Run A Recording Studio Business From Home Or Rent A Premises – Which is Right

If you want to learn more about working from home then check out our article Working From Home In Audio Production? This May Be Everything You Need To Know.

The Continuing Move To Home-Based Working

Back in 2016, we said that the trend perhaps reflected the huge change in budgets available for music and post-production, now being a fraction of what they were over a decade ago. Add to that, many professionals simply do not have the money to invest in equipment and to maintain the overhead of a large studio.

Rollback even earlier to the 1980s, what started as a recording revolution to encourage hobbyists to record from home created an entirely new generation of recording professionals who start and maintain a career in audio at a fraction of what it used to cost, all from the comfort and convenience of their own home.

As we saw in 2016, this revolution has also had a significant impact on the number of people that responded as 'semi-pro', who are perhaps trying to build a full-time career in pro audio whilst augmenting their income in other ways - this too would have been largely impossible without the home-studio revolution as the only option then was to own or work in a commercial facility.

In 2018 we saw a growth in home working, which across the board has levelled out, but drilling down one level as we have mentioned the move to home working has increased in the post-production sector whilst decreasing in the music sector, although we suspect this is more about people in the music sector moving away from Pro Tools.

Then the pandemic came along in 2020, and especially in the post-production sector, there was a race to set people up at home so that businesses could continue to work and production schedules met. What is interesting is that back in May 2020, when we asked those currently working from home because of COVID 19 lockdown restrictions if they would like to continue working from home, 77% of respondents selected the option, “I am working from home and... I love it and wish I'd done it sooner”.

You can learn more about this in our article Over 75% Want To Carry On Working From Home After Lock Down.

What Now?

Now as we learn to live with COVID, will we all go back to how we worked before the pandemic? Our May 2020 poll presents a strong desire for people to continue to be able to work from home, but what about the facilities? We have reports that even in October 2021, when restrictions have largely been lifted, certainly in the LA area, very large facilities are almost completely empty. This means that a great many people in our business - engineers, mixers, editors, IT people, front-office workers - are still working from home; breathing their own air, using their own electricity and gear and fancy chairs.

Surely this also shows that facilities are choosing to have people work from home, rather than come in and work in their studios. Will a legacy of the pandemic be an acceleration of the cottage-isation of our industry?

What Do We Mean By Cottage-isation?

It's a phrase I coined back in 2015. The industrial revolution that began in the 18th century started, when the production of things like cotton thread and woven products moved from the parlour in an artisan's cottage to a large factory. This resulted in a much-increased output as well as a significant reduction in costs, with the benefits of mass production.

What these results show is the inverse of that process. What I mean by this, is more and more people are working from home or in very small facilities working largely ‘in the box’ without the need for large format consoles, big rooms, large multi-room studio complexes and so on - the cottage-isation of our industry. You can read more about cottage-isation in our article How Do We Survive In The Changing World Of Pro Audio?

What Do You Think?

What do you make of these results? Do any of the changes surprise you? Do share your thoughts and observations in the comments below…