Here’s How Covid-19 Relief Can Increase Local Investment In Culture

• Let’s turn all relief programs into community investment vehicles.
• Relief — on top of subsistence — should be tied to creating work; works should be registered locally; the investment vehicle could take an equity stake in each work.
• For every $1 brought back, 5c returns to the community investor on top of all taxes being paid / due locally as work is registered locally.
• That money can be circularly invested back in communities, across infrastructure, more commissioning etc…
• We can create more businesses of artists out of what we’re already doing now.

It is heartwarming to learn of all the relief programs introduced in wake of the the Covid-19 crisis and that the list continues to increase. On the terrific Music x Corona newsletter, there’s a number of new initiatives that have been launched this weekend. SoundCloud is pledging to boost support by $5m. Meek Mill’s non profit is providing hundreds of thousands of face masks to prisons and rehabilitation centres. Pink, who has recovered from Covid-19, is donating $1m. Around the world, relief efforts have been launched by private firms, nonprofits, charities, governments and individual musicians. The support is substantial.

From Pitchfork

This demonstrates:

• Music (and culture as a whole) matters. I’m not sure if it has been added up, but a cursory 10 minutes of googling and scrolling our own Sound Diplomacy database reveals over $50m in relief specific to musicians, artists and the workers that service them.
• When we need money to support what we care about, we find it.

Questions This Poses:

• When we emerge from this pandemic, what will the state of music, arts and culture funding be? Will we return to where we were, will we exhaust what’s available or is this level of support a new (and welcome) norm?
• It is welcome that a number of private firms, such as Spotify and Google, have initiated efforts to support struggling musicians. But many of these firms value is tied up in their usage — and lack of fair remuneration — of music. What is the cost benefit analysis if these firms paid artists fairly from the beginning? Would the music ecosystem become better capitalised so this amount of relief wouldn’t be required?
• I applaud the amount of charity being offered. We — as humans — come together at times of crisis. But is this unintentionally reinforcing a dangerous way of thinking — music, art and culture is charity and to pursue a career in it means you accept that it may need to requiring charity?

Spotify COVID-19 Music Relief - PRS for Music Foundation

How to Help Musicians During the COVID-19 Crisis

I know now is not the time for answers, but it has never been a better time to ask big questions. If the way we’ve been supporting, capitalising and sustaining our music and cultural ecosystems has led to this — waves of charity appeals to ensure artists can feed their families, pay rent/mortgage and subsist — then isn’t what we’re doing broken? Artists, like any business, need access to finance. Making great music costs time. Time cost money. It is the most valuable resource we have. So what are the alternatives?

Here’s an idea:

• What if every relief effort was not only a donation or a loan, but an investment in its recipient? Let’s say a musician, artist, record label or any other creative received $5000 in relief support. What if that contribution was an investment, rather than a donation? Notwithstanding paying for subsistence, what if the grant encouraged or even required the recipient to create new art in a specific time period and ensure it was formally registered as IP so it can be tracked.
• And what if as part of the investment conditions, that art (music, song, dance, painting, whatever) would return 5% of any uplift that emerged from that art back the investor.
• If then any profit was returned from usage of the content, then it would trigger a requirement that any net benefit be reinvested in the local community.
• The grant / relief becomes a community investment vehicle.

Music rights can be excellent investments, especially as patient capital. They are registered for 70 years and can bring consistent returns to investors. What if we turned relief efforts into rights investment portfolios? This is the same methodology, in simple terms, that venture capitalists use to invest in apps. Spread one’s investment across a wide array of initiatives. If one succeeds, it often pays and exceeds other losses.

City's music stars go online during virus outbreak

What Could This Mean?

1. Music and culture are integral parts of life.
2. If music and culture need supporting, there’s money to support it. This has been proven.
3. We have to find a better way to support those creating music, art and culture — and it should not be charity. It should be an investment.
4. We can change the way we — as communities — invest in music, art and culture if we want.

Money is going out the door. If some of it came back and was tracked as investment, we could build better infrastructure for musicians and artists; invest in their healthcare and mental wellbeing; provide access to benefit packages; support education and social care and importantly, create a better ecosystem for all us — led by our collective belief in the transformative power of music and culture.

This article is #4 in a series. Here are the others.