Music Commission considers dedicated grant stream for live music venues

Music venues around the city could have a dedicated source of funding in next year’s Live Music Fund program, which was created to help inject city money into the local music economy.

During discussion on expected changes to the program in 2024, members of the Music Commission told city staff Monday that they’d like to explore keeping performing musicians and live event promoters in a separate recipient pool from music venues that typically have more staffing available to dedicate to a grant proposal.

Venues were not included in this year’s pilot edition of the $3.5 million program, which saw grants of $5,000 or $10,000 awarded to 368 recipients. The budget for next year’s edition will grow to increase the number of awards rather than making the process more competitive.

“It might be a good idea to define in advance what we’d like those percentages to be,” Commissioner Anne-Charlotte Patterson said. “Venues, being larger organizations, might have more staff that can help with an application, whereas a band leader might struggle more. We’ve heard that that there were some difficulties with the application, so we don’t want that while we’re excited for venues to join. … I don’t want the independent musicians and smaller groups to be eclipsed.”

Erica Shamaly, director of the Music and Entertainment Division, said her office’s experience with participants in several years of the Creative Space Assistance Program has created familiarity with that part of the live music ecosystem and the needs of music venues relative to other applicants. She also noted that the addition of music venues to the applicant pool will be incorporated along with forthcoming changes recommended by a trio of outside consultants performing a larger review of grant programs overseen by the Economic Development Department.

Another possible change for the grants would be increasing the minimum grant amount, with Shamaly saying, “This was a lot of work for a $5,000 grant.”

“We have thoughts and ideas based on talking to all of you, talking to community members and just learning from our own experiences with the program,” she said. “Nothing will be rolled out and finalized without the commission seeing a draft and giving us some feedback along with other commissions. I don’t have a timeline of when that will be. This was just the first eligibility to show you. We anticipate that the types of things that could get funded are as before, but we’ll just come back and provide more details of what that all is going to look like.”

An update on the final steps of the 2023 program showed that the division and administrators the Long Center for the Performing Arts have completed all the initial payments to awardees who have completed their paperwork, with several second payments and a handful of final payments made as well.

Shamaly said staff has been pleased to see a number of recipients collaborating or forming consortiums to pool their award money to make larger events.

“We’re seeing records being made. We’re seeing community events happen in neighborhoods and in districts, and we’re seeing good old-fashioned venue shows,” she said. “The fact that the risk is kind of alleviated and that there’s actual investment in this industry, it’s an investment in your business, and investment in this sector. It’s being used in such a way, I think, so that every dollar is well used.”

Commissioner Oren Rosenthal said he hopes for those kinds of positive results to grow next year when venues are added to the mix.

“What I hope for from these grants is to see some real innovation, people who have a good idea who might say, will this make money or will it not? And are willing to roll the dice,” he said. “That’s where great growth happens, people taking a chance, doing something new. And that’s why I like that we will have venues, yes, but venues have a certain worldview and then promoters have another and producers have another and musicians have another. If we get enough people out there, then our chances of really striking it rich.”

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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