Op-Ed: Federal Funding May be Only Way to Save Musicians During COVID-19 Pandemic
By Jeff Gage
The microphones are dead, and the music industry seems on the brink of following suit.
When the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, was canceled on March 6 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was the first domino to fall in what is now an industry wide crisis for the live music business. The past week saw other major music festivals, including next month’s Coachella in Indio, California, get postponed, while LiveNation and AEG — the world’s two largest live entertainment promoters — suspended all programming.
Live music, which makes up roughly half the revenue of the $54 billion global music industry, has been nearly silenced, with estimates projecting up to $5 billion in losses from the coronavirus fallout. But as organizers, bookers, promoters, and venue owners rush get a handle on the situation, no one is in greater need of public support than the artists who may now have no viable way to support themselves.
The timing of coronavirus’ spread couldn’t have been worse for the music business. South by Southwest (SXSW) is the largest music festival in North America, and the traditional kickoff to a festival season that is one of the industry’s biggest profit drivers for half the year. Also showcasing film and technology during its two-week media extravaganza, SXSW is vital to its city’s economy: According to the event’s 2019 impact report, it attracted 73,000 attendees and injected $355 million into the Austin economy. Last week’s cancelation casts the future of the festival into doubt, as organizers already announced the layoff of one-third of its permanent staff. Meanwhile, venues and promoters scramble to schedule or reschedule shows, while thousands of local workers — from bar staff to caterers — stand to lose pay or even their jobs.
For the musicians booked to play gigs during SXSW, either official showcases or one of the hundreds of unofficial ones scheduled throughout Austin during the festival, the cancelation has a ripple effect. After the typically slow schedule of touring, promotion, and album releases during the winter months, it’s a major activation point for artists’ annual cycles. Though bands don’t tend to get discovered at SXSW like they used to — more often these days it functions as a campaign rollout for labels and signed acts — it remains a valuable opportunity for exposure, with tours routed through Texas and surrounding areas to help cover costs or at least make ends meet.
That SXSW’s cancelation is no longer an isolated event only compounds the issue. While other large-scale events like Coachella, the second-biggest festival in the United States, are postponed, smaller indoor venues also feel the pinch. In an effort to curb the spread of coronavirus, citywide measures are in place from New York City to Seattle limiting public gatherings to as little as 250 people, preventing all but the smallest club concerts from taking place. New York’s ban forced the effective shuttering of Broadway, which The Broadway League says won’t open until at least April 12.
For the majority of musicians, making live music is their primary, if not only source of income. Even before the collapse of physical music and today’s paltry payouts from online streaming, touring was the primary means of earning income for most artists. Canceled shows are lost, and for the time being at least, irreplaceable income. Few artists can afford to buy show insurance, and even those who can generally aren’t covered when the cause is a public health epidemic. (The same goes for festivals, one of the key issues currently causing SXSW management so much financial trouble.)
To help make ends meet during the show freeze, artists could theoretically try to expedite the release of an upcoming album (should they have one in the pipeline), as those are often pegged to either the spring or fall. But, to make matters even worse, such a move — though already complicated due to the untangling of marketing and promotional commitments — could be next to impossible given the need to coordinate with a vinyl release at a time when the world’s manufacturing output is crippled by the recent fire at the Apollo Masters plant.
Outside help is necessary for the musicians who form the creative backbone of a business that brings enormous local, national, and international value to the marketplace. As self-employed workers, they aren’t usually eligible to apply for unemployment benefits in the United States, although it’s possible they could receive aid Disaster Unemployment Assistance now that President Trump declared a national emergency.
In the wider arts world, some local communities have taken it on themselves to try helping their artists. On Monday, author Ijeoma Oluo started the Seattle Artists Relief campaign on GoFundMe with a stated goal of raising $100,000 to help support musicians, DJs, visual artists, actors and other creatives whose livelihoods are under threat from event cancelations owing to coronavirus. The fundraising page states priority for aid applications will be given to candidates who are minorities or have disabilities. By week’s end, SAR already bypassed its goal. In Boston, the city’s Opportunity Fund — established in 2018 to award $2,000 grants to fund projects by area artists — was temporarily repurposed started Thursday as the Boston Artist Relief Fund. Under its new (and rather unfortunately named) BARF auspices, the program offers smaller $500 to $1,000 grants to help with things like covering the cost of canceled events, reimbursing travel expenses, and covering lost wages for those who work outside service industry jobs.
Elsewhere, musicians and DJs are exploring livestreaming options to put on shows during the shutdown. On Saturday in Minnesota, a 501(c)3 run by First Avenue called the Twin Cities Music Community Trust started its own fundraising campaign. “There are larger funds in Minnesota dedicated to supporting orgs and nonprofits, and our focus is on the individual industry workers and local musicians who need assistance now,” reads the application form.
Though not directed specifically towards the creative sector, New York City announced its own initiative on Tuesday to extend interest-free grants and cash loans up to $75,000 to small businesses. That could be a boon to music venues that qualify, but would have little direct benefit to artists, save for those who might work on staff at one such venue and potentially save that job as a result.
None of those solutions, however, would be more than a temporary fix for musicians in need. Action on a larger scale is necessary, and a model for the United States is already gaining support in the United Kingdom (which, similar to a proposal this week from President Trump, enacted a tax break to businesses to alleviate the economic strain from coronavirus). A petition launched Thursday calling for financial assistance from the government to those working in the music industry currently has 95,000 signees, nearly all of the 100,000 required for it to be automatically taken up by Parliament.
The terms of the British petition are vague, but a federally mandated fund for specifically catered to musicians — rather than piecemeal fundraisers from the public or local governmental efforts — may be the only way to ensure that widespread harm won’t be done to their careers and later capacities to create music as they wait out the extreme but all too familiar hardships of the coronavirus disaster.
