AUSTIN, Texas — The city of Austin is giving musicians a chance to create more music and build up the local music scene with an even larger Austin Live Music Fund grant program for 2024.
As the program enters its second year, the city increased the total funding by $1 million, bringing the total grant to $4.5 million. That means musicians, bands and promoters will be able to receive $15,000 and $30,000 grants and live music venues will receive $30,000 and $60,000 grants.
Erica Shamaly, the Music Entertainment Division manager within the Economic Development Department for the city, said as Austin grows, preserving it as the “Live Music Capital of the World” has been top of mind.
“The more successful you are at drawing people into your city, the more expensive things tend to get. And so we are just trying to be very focused with the type of support going to our creatives, to our musicians and venues,” Shamaly said.
Local musician Brandon Hughes was a recipient of the inaugural 2023 Live Music Fund. With his $10,000 grant, he was able to record and produce his first major extended play (EP).
“With this grant, it’s really helped open doors that I’ve never really had open before,” Hughes said.
Hughes said it can cost thousands of dollars to record and produce just one song, so it’s taken him a while to get to a place where he wanted to record.
“I don’t have a lot of recorded material, and that’s from a few factors, from the finances, from finding the right people to work with, finding the right place to record,” Hughes said. “The finances was always the one pillar, it’s like, you know what, I would love to do this, but I want to do it right.”
Hughes' new songs on his “Just Breathe EP” talk about his life dealing with anxiety. The personal EP was something he didn’t want to release until he felt he could do it justice.
“I’ve had some of these songs for a long time, and for me, it was just like … I don’t want to put these down unless I can feel fully open, that I’ve given my best in the best way to present to people, that they can take something out of it,” Hughes said. “The only way that happened was through this grant.”
The grant has also helped Hughes with the marketing of his EP, which is something that is difficult for artists to fund nowadays.
“In the old days, it used to be that your record label would, you know, spend the money to do all of the product marketing around your record, around the band. Well, that’s just not the case anymore,” Shamaly said.
With his EP slated to come out in just a few weeks, Hughes will be using the rest of his grant money to market it and perform shows over the summer to promote it.
The application for the Austin Live Music Fund will open next Tuesday, May 21, at 10 a.m. and will close on June 18 at 7 p.m. The city will have application assistance online and even a bilingual translator to help answer questions in English and Spanish.