Music Funding 101
The Need for Music Funding
By far, funding is the most common problem that bands have. This is probably no different from any other new business... restaurants, construction companies, ISP's, telemarketing firms, etc., as well as new bands and record labels, all have the same requirement of needing money before they can get started. And of course, there are big and small levels of the amounts of money needed, depending on how big of a marketing attempt the band is trying to accomplish. Bands have an advantage over other types of businesses, however, because bands can start off at a low level, with almost no money (try opening a restaurant for only $5000). As long as bands have their instruments, they are on their way. But then again, this is just the low end.
On the high end, bands no longer have the advantage. By the high end, I mean the equivalent to what major and major-indie record labels spend on marketing their priority projects...generally over $250,000 USD per song, and sometimes over $1,000,000. Most music marketing projects, fortunately, are not that expensive; they are more than the cost of a guitar, but less than the cost of opening up a McDonalds.
With restaurants, most money goes towards kitchen equipment and space; with construction companies, it goes towards tractors and hand tools; ISP's spend it all on servers and web connections; and telemarketing firms need to get phones, office space, and long distance service. But with bands, it's promotion, promotion, promotion! (After all, the instruments can only cost so much). Matter of fact, at major labels, a $1,000,000 release (of a single) typically has ninety percent of the money going into promotion and marketing (and the biggest chunk of that goes to radio promotion).
Bands and new labels learn quickly that promotion is the real battle. Getting the instruments, writing the songs, recording the albums, and performing for fans could all be considered hard work, but they are easy when compared to calling radio stations, tracking down club promoters, getting albums in stores, getting paid by stores, and letting the public know about the next show so that the band will have more than five people show up.
That's where funding comes in; funding goes beyond the instruments and beyond the recordings. Funding give bands the money to hire the radio promoters, marketing people, PR firms, and booking agencies that are needed when trying to reach large numbers of fans.
Music falls into the category of perfume and soda; the product is low cost to make, but the marketing of it is very, very expensive. This is not a bad thing, however. What it means is that no matter how good the product is (music, perfume, soda), it's really the promotion that's going to determine if it makes it big. And you have total control over the promotion, via the money. If you have any doubt about this, just look at the quality of pop music, pop perfume, and pop soda. You have to hand it to the guys who put that stuff out, they've got the marketing figured out and paid for. Your band or sponsor name can get this exposure too.
But for several reasons, funding for music has really fallen behind the funding that has been generated for other industries. TalentFunding.com brings funding back to music. Everybody loves music, at least what they themselves consider to be good music. The trick is to connect the people who can support the music, with the music people who need to be supported. There are so many musicians in so many nooks and crannies, that it takes something like the internet to give them all a chance to connect with sources of money. Hopefully they take advantage of it here.
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