Support journalism. Support the arts.
If you have made it this far, it’s safe to assume that music is an indispensable part of your day. Can we function normally as a society without arts? The pandemic gave us some clues, but that’s a debate for another day.
We firmly believe that good art cannot survive on the mercy of the free-market. It thrives on patronage.
Currently, we lack an ecosystem that nourishes the arts and encourages artists to express themselves freely. It is important to recognise that artists make next to nothing with streams and the platforms are comfortably moving to a model that pays lesser and lesser to the artists. Yet, the artists are compelled to put their music on these platforms in order to be heard and discovered. It is a vicious cycle.
As a digital media platform, we have leveraged the creativity of artists and going forward, we want to keep the artist at the center of our model. Keeping this in mind, we are setting aside 25% of our membership revenue to set up a fund that gives back to the Independent Music community. Each month, our editors will pick Indian artist(s) to support via the fund.
To begin with, we are setting a cap of INR 5000 per artist. This means that in one month, we could help support multiple artists as well. This cap and value could be modified in the future as we grow and gain more paying subscribers.
Here are some of the ways we have identified to use this fund to support musicians. This is not an exhaustive list, so suggestions are warmly welcomed:
- Sponsor their music distribution.
- Assist them with their recording/studio expenses.
- Assist them with their tour expenses.
We will consider India born and based artists (with an Indian bank account) who have at least one official release either up for streaming on music platforms or for sale in digital or physical format.
No boundaries, no biases
- Language no bar
- Genres no bar
- Age no bar
- Social media following no bar
Complete transparency
Here’s the best part! Each paisa going in and out of this fund will be accounted for and the balance sheet will be updated every quarter and shared with our subscribers.
We hope that this will go a long way in furthering the Indian music industry and fill the potholes that are glaring at us, now more than ever.
