HOW TO SUPPORT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY DURING THE CRISIS | FEATURE
Isabel Thomas looks at the varied ways musicians, venues and teachers are adapting to a world where their bread and butter has been taken off the menu.
We all need access to some form of entertainment to get us through this time, whether it’s TV shows, films, books, video games or music. But many of those who create the media that we enjoy have had their work put on hold. While reruns can keep us going for a while, it’s also important that we continue to have contemporary culture that reflects, and helps us come to terms with, the unique crisis in which we find ourselves. As that famous misattributed Winston Churchill quote goes, without the arts “then what are we fighting for?” Keeping the arts and creativity alive in our modern culture is vital, then, for helping us all navigate our way through difficult emotional times and lifting our spirits.
Producing new art, though, is difficult if people are more preoccupied with struggling with the weekly shop. For musicians, government measures to help businesses and the self-employed are so general that they just don’t work for many areas of the music industry, and people are slipping through the cracks. Beyond the appeal of free time to work on new music, eat well and get houses in order, there is a looming unease around the possibility that, after a couple of months more of this, things are, financially, going to get very tough. It therefore becomes important to show the music industry support not only in the pocket, but also in terms of appreciation and encouragement, to ensure that venues and organisations are able to kick back into gear when all of this is over.
For starters, many venues are showing online gigs via Vimeo or Twitch for a small charge, while others, including most online open mic nights, are free or encouraging donations. Individuals are also taking the initiative in this regard, collecting donations for themselves, charities, venues, the NHS, or, in Frank Turner’s case, an independent music venue of choice (The Joiners in Southampton, via a live set on the evening of Thurs 2 Apr); while promoters use social media to amalgamate and advertise live streams, such as Sofar Sounds’ free Keep Listening gigs, which encourage donations to their own Global Artist Fund.
In most cases, these are solo performances, one musician playing along to another’s pre-recorded tracks. However, a certain percentage of musicians are lucky to have someone to jam with at home and in front of the camera, including the singer and guitarist from Cardiff’s soulful Bobbie-Jo And The Knock, and the young sisters from Bristol’s grunge duo Miss Kill – both streaming live from their sunny gardens.
For individual artists you can also contribute through paid downloads from platforms such as Bandcamp. While streaming platforms such as Spotify do pay the artist (so keep using them!), the royalties are very small, whereas downloads tend to give the artist a much higher percentage. Some sites even give you the opportunity to increase the amount or add a tip, where musicians report receiving notes such as “a little extra to buy groceries”. Additionally, look out for initiatives such as Bandcamp’s recent revenue waiver, where for one day all money from purchases went straight to the musicians. There will no doubt be plenty more of these as companies try to win over new online customers.
You can do more than just listen, though. For dancers, south Wales organisation The Swing Project has moved its Friday Night Swing and its monthly tea dance online, where lucky couples who live together can dance, solo swing dancers can have a go at dancing on their own, and other swing fans can watch and enjoy the music with a cup of tea or a glass of gin. Bonus kudos to Jessie Brooks for “playing great music by bands and artists whose livelihood is affected by the current health crisis”.
Crowdfunders provide another chance to show support. On the website for Tramshed and The Globe, you can purchase gift vouchers, or a virtual pint to redeem at a later date, whereas in Cardiff, venues such as The Moon, Clwb Ifor Bach, Tramshed and The Globe offer rewards including tickets for reopening parties, merchandise, personalised playlists and virtual pints, plus direct donations to particular types of staff: bartenders, sound techs or djs. Other venues are exercising their enterprising muscles by offering deliveries: Le Public Space in Newport are able to bring their vegan fast food and bargain cocktails to your door from mid-April, and Acapela in Pentyrch are delivering pizza.
Things keep changing, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for more creative campaigns. As well as indulging in these ways to help out music scenes financially, you can spread the word so that more people can show their support. Furthermore, you can add your name to petitions calling for a re-examining of the parameters around financial protection for small businesses and the self-employed, to more accurately reflect the way the music industry functions, and sharing these around. These include official parliamentary petitions, as well as Music Venue Trust’s petition to cancel the Festival Of Britain planned for 2022, and the petition to Spotify to triple royalty payments for musicians in light of the coronavirus-related losses.
It’s worth remembering that the music industry encompasses, and relies upon, a hugely varied range of careers including conductors, tutors, instrument makers and technicians, producers – the list goes on. Consider taking up online music lessons if you can afford them and have more spare time than usual to fill, as many music schools and instrumental tutors have moved onto lessons via video conferencing, often with very impressive setups.
Additionally, while projects such as the Canton Community Sing allow you to sing along with your neighbours’ voices acoustically from the garden or an open window, you could keep the art of conducting alive by joining an online choir: Gareth Malone’s Great British Chorus is free on YouTube, but you won’t be able to hear other people singing live. For more of a community feel, Choir Community’s Distant Sing charges one pound for each arrangement, used in their free virtual rehearsals, where you can see everyone’s faces and interact to some degree.
For most of the above, you simply need access to any smartphone, tablet or laptop. If you have an audio interface, headphones, your instruments and some leads, though, you can send off recordings to a producer to be made into professional-sounding tracks; at the moment, many are offering reduced prices. There are plenty of brand new videos to get you inspired: from the family in Kent whose lockdown adaptation of One Day More from Les Miserables has gone viral, to the Taf Rapids Stringband’s Wash Your Hands song [pictured], for which the parts and video clips were all recorded and assembled remotely.
One final contribution you can make to the music industry, and this is not to be underestimated in its importance, is to keep your musical social groups going, whether that’s a band, choir, orchestra, dance group, or just some friends you regularly bump into at gigs. By meeting up via video calls for chats, quizzes and virtual bars, you can ensure that music retains the social bonding that ties it all together, for when live music-making can become part of our lives again.
