LETTER: Where did all the music go?

As a 40-year seasoned of the casino industry, I person watched the post-pandemic epoch permanently change the psyche of our casino floors. Corporate operators and backstage equity firms person systematically eliminated a halfway portion of Las Vegas history: the casual, open-air unrecorded euphony lounge.

Venues that erstwhile hosted unthinkable section bands six nights a week person been wiped out. In their place, we present person high-margin sports books, luxury retail oregon hyper-exclusive cocktail lounges that complaint premium prices. While casual tourists mightiness not announcement the missing music, anyone who knows this metropolis understands that the accepted lounge country has been wholly hollowed retired connected the Strip.

This isn’t conscionable atrocious for the classical Vegas atmosphere. It is devastating for our section workforce. Thousands of gigging musicians, tech crews and hospitality workers person mislaid dependable employment. Compounding the contented is Nevada’s 9 percent unrecorded amusement tax, which actively penalizes smaller properties for offering unrecorded euphony alternatively than incentivizing them to bash so.

If we privation to sphere the taste individuality that made Las Vegas the Entertainment Capital of the World, our authorities leaders indispensable measurement in. We request taxation exemptions for small-capacity casino lounges and strict amusement mandates built straight into gaming licensing requirements. It is clip to clasp firm resorts accountable for preserving the unrecorded euphony that built this city.