Stuff we’re heartened by today includes Resident Advisor’s ‘Save Our Scene‘ campaign, which is mustering collecting action from the electronic music community. There’s an open letter that fans, musicians and other people in the industry can sign – more than 3,000 people so far have – with encouragement for people who want to do their part. “We need to hold each other up, to communicate clearly and compassionately, explore new ideas and work together more closely than we ever have before. Crucially, we’ll need to resist the forces of division brought on by desperate times… How can you help? Buy music and merchandise. Make a donation to support clubs and nightlife workers. Skip a refund to a cancelled event. Do whatever you can. Your support makes a massive difference.”
Also excellent: a collaboration between Help Musicians, the Incorporated Society of Musicians, The Ivors Academy, the Music Managers Forum, the Music Producers Guild, the Musicians’ Union, and UK Music on a website – Corona Advice for Musicians. It gathers together governmental advice and links to resources around mental health, legal / contractual issues, debt advice and more.
There’s also metal label Napalm Records launching an information hub around its artists and fans. It includes a tour news section with information on cancelled and rescheduled dates; a list of the different crowdfunding initiatives its acts are involved with; an inventory of livestreamed shows and where to watch them; and a link to the label’s own D2C store. Again, encouragement: “Whether it be supporting crowdfunding campaigns, purchasing merchandise and music, or even offering words of encouragement to artists via social media – this support is crucial in keeping music moving forward in times like these.”
There’s also news of what more streaming services are doing. SoundCloud is going to be livestreaming ‘Creator Office Hours‘ every Monday, with its music, artist relations and label services teams fielding questions from musicians. It’s also teaming up with Twitch to fast-track ‘affiliate’ status on the latter service for SoundCloud Pro, Premier and Repost creators. That’s important: it means they can start earning money on Twitch straight away, rather than having to wait until their Twitch channel qualifies for partner (i.e. monetisation) status. SoundCloud is also halving the price of its Pro Unlimited subscription for artists.
Elsewhere, fan-membership platform Patreon has launched ‘What the Fund‘, a grant program for artists affected by the coronavirus pandemic, which fans can donate to via PayPal. And finally today, hats off to Rihanna’s non-profit organisation the Clara Lionel Foundation, for its $5m donation to various bodies tackling the crisis globally. There will be more of all these kinds of stories, and we’ll be making sure to report on them over the coming weeks and months.
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