Music Funding 101
How TalentFunding.com Was Created
TalentFunding.com grew out of our current business, Bryan Farrish Radio Promotion (www.radio-media.com). Since 1998, we have been independent radio airplay promotion people, otherwise known as "independent promoters" to the music community, or "indies" to the radio and label community. Our only job is to get radio airplay for unknown independent bands. Actually, let me correct that: we have two jobs; the second job is selling the radio airplay campaigns to the bands.
By myself in one-desk office, I started calling indie bands on the phone (I had no internet). In a few years I had my first client, and by January 1998 I had four. But I had to do all the selling by myself, as well as the actual promotion work to the stations; and I continued to be the only salesperson for about four years. Then some of my assistants started to help in the sales capacity, and sure enough, they were able to learn the commission sales process too, much quicker than I had.
We promoted a lot of bands, and each salesperson would always have one particular client that could spend more on a much bigger airplay campaign than most of the other bands could. These large clients would really stand out (and hip hop guys were especially good at this), since they were normal people but somehow they would be able convince others to give them money to buy campaigns.
And that's where we discovered it: About one out of every eight bands who hired us got their money from someone else. Someone like a "backer" or "investor," as they like to call them (not just their dad or brother); somebody who had the money to give, and who wanted to be involved in music, was always the common theme.
Radio promotion campaigns are not cheap; a few bands spend several hundred thousand dollars (USD) just to get airplay, some spend fifty thousand; more often they'd spend ten thousand, and most often they'd spend less. And while we are always super-happy to see a band get any marketing money at all, I always felt that if the bands offered "sponsorships" instead of "investments," they would get even more money. So in the 60+ radio airplay articles on our Radio-Media.com site, I used three of them to try to explain the sponsorship idea. But it was not enough information.
Then, after thinking about it for another two years, I also came to the realization that potential sponsors, the ones who really can spend money on bands, will not want to be "harassed" or even "over contacted" by bands wanting money. After all, in the investment community, individual investors stay totally invisible until they are ready to make contact. So, if a site were going to be built that put sponsors in contact with bands, the sponsors would have to be totally hidden, much like a dating site.
Lastly, there was the task of finding the sponsors and getting them into the site. I knew this would take a lot of work and money, and so I waited until I could do it properly. So here it is!
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