Maybe It Is Time For Another New Deal for Musicians
To look at solutions to the challenges facing the music industry and ecosystem in COVID-19, we need to learn from our past more than we are now.
Off the back of Music Venue Trust’s terrific #saveourvenues campaign, here’s another big idea. Let’s reimagine the Federal Music Project (US) and the New Deal for Musicians (UK). Here’s how.
Thanks to The Musicians Union, Music Venue Trust, Association of Independent Music, BPI & UK Music for their feedback and support.
As part of a stimulus package introduced by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, the Federal Music Project was launched. It was one strand of five funding packages geared towards the arts and in the United States, the first of its kind dedicated to music. The objective was to employ musicians around the United States at a time when municipal coffers were preoccupied with other matters such as healthcare, housing and agriculture. It demonstrated foresight and a recognition that music, art and culture were necessary to American life. Until its closure in 1943 (its budget was cut in 1939 and then renamed, continuing in another incarnation for 4 more years), the program resourced music education through what were called ‘appreciation’ programs in a number of states. While focused on Western classical music and admittedly racialised and inequitable, it supported musicians at a time when many were in need.
Its legacy is widespread. Music schools, community programs and state-wide music initiatives that were created in that time still exist. It pioneered a model for music to be appreciated and recognised as a vital part of American society. It cemented an argument that if we value it, it must be paid for by all of us in some way. All this in the late 1930s.
Spending some time in the archives of the program is fascinating. Listening to some of the music is even more interesting. But what is most fascinating is at a time of crisis, music was prioritised. Here’s a terrific quote in Musical Happenings, an academic pop music journal:
In response to the economic downturn, government sponsorship became prevalent in all major industries through Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Roosevelt especially desired to support the arts because the “American Dream” offered “the promise not only of economic and social justice but also of cultural enrichment.” Each of these aims — economic justice, social justice, and cultural enrichment — was fulfilled in a unique and substantial way by the Federal Music Project (FMP), which sought to address the needs of the national music community.
Fast forward six decades and cross the pond. In 1998, the United Kingdom’s Labour Government instituted, as part of a widespread welfare/social security reform, the New Deal For Musicians. I wrote about this in my PhD, comparing it to some of the programs that existed (and still do) in Canada. While not well known, this program effectively paid musicians to be musicians. It cost £4.5m (about £7m or so now factoring inflation), and according to The Independent, supported 4000 artists between 1998 and 2003. Paul McCartney launched it and Alan McGee was one of the industry leaders involved. Here’s The Independent again, who in their article featuring a young Chris Martin on its cover, wrote about McGee.
“I bump into young kids all the time who say they started their bands because of the New Deal for Musicians,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of music has come through because of it. It’s a very bad time to be in a band with the economic collapse and the record companies in crisis.”
In Canada, many of these types of programs have been in existence since 1982. That year in partnership with the commercial radio sector, the music industry created FACTOR (Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Record), essentially offering grants for artists to be artists. Because Canada has a content quota of 35% on its publicly owned airwaves, there is an impetus to create content so there is content to air. FACTOR began as a solution to that. It has since evolved to dispersing $25m a year and is one of many organisations in Canada supporting music and the arts.
Name a Canadian artist you like. I bet they received FACTOR or other public support. From Arkells to The Weeknd, Drake to Broken Social Scene, The Tragically Hip to Michael Buble — their careers have been supported in one way or another by Canada’s music funding system. Because it is important that musicians make music. And that costs money.
A number of UK artists who participated in the New Deal for Musicians found commercial success. This NME article cites Jem, James Morrison and The Zutons as three. And again, over 4000 artists benefitted. While the Federal Music Project was inequitable and racist, offering only token opportunities to diverse voices, it did provide an outlet for music to be heard at a time where few were willing to pay for it. 40,000 musicians (mainly white, unfortunately) participated.
A number of countries, particularly in Europe and Australasia, have substantial talent development assistance on offer for musicians to be musicians for some time. France has around €250m euros available to creators and a robust music policy infrastructure (probably the world’s best). Sweden gives around $8m, one of the reasons Swedes write a disproportionate amount of successful pop music. K-Pop is essentially a state invention. Australia, New Zealand and other countries significantly fund their music ecosystems. This is outside providing of music education, having robust intellectual property infrastructures and of course, a citizenry with income to spend on music. That’s a given.
So what can we learn from this?
We are facing a crisis. Surveys compiling economic loss data vastly outweigh legitimate new revenue generating opportunities. What can we do?
To answer this, we have to accept the following:
- If we all agree music is valuable to society, then we must accept that something need be done to support it financially if the market can’t.
- If we choose to support one genre over another, then one genre is deemed more important as a result. That fosters inequity.
- If we accept the market as the decider here, then we also accept what the market provides — less choice, more consolidation.
- People need to eat, pay their rent and subsist. If they can’t do it via income, they will turn to social security. That costs us as a society. That drives up debt and makes us all poorer — economically, socially and culturally.
- Access to art, music and culture, in many respects, was never and has never been available to everybody. Only when it is threatened by those who previously took it for granted do we realise it is not ubiquitous. Many communities have faced this for generations.
The music industry — especially the live music industry — is in crisis. There are thousands of charitable appeals for musicians, artists and creatives. Would creating new versions of the Federal Music Project or the New Deal for Musicians be the answer here?
If musicians (or all artists for that matter) were part of such a program, its cost would be controlled. We’d know how much we — as a society — would be investing. And if this existed, could it be more rigorously incentivised?
Could a certain amount of content be required to remain on the program? Or should those engaged participate in additional educational programs, such as learning about marketing or IP? Or like in Canada, is the simple creation of content enough?
We need new ideas to get us through this crisis so we are in better place when we emerge from it. Looking to these programs in our past and some of the initiatives around the world can lead us into an ecosystem more supportive of musicians, more compassionate of art and more geared to recognising that music — like all art — is a human right we all deserve, no matter who we are, where we live or what we look like.
