{"id":805655,"date":"2020-03-25T07:01:50","date_gmt":"2020-03-25T13:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=972411"},"modified":"2020-03-25T07:01:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T13:01:50","slug":"music-startup-sofar-sounds-will-pay-artists-for-canceled-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/music-startup-sofar-sounds-will-pay-artists-for-canceled-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Startup Sofar Sounds Will Pay Artists For Canceled Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Earlier this month, Sofar Sounds<\/a>, a startup that stages around 10,000 intimate concerts a year across 400 cities, had no choice but to suspend all its shows due to the coronavirus<\/a> pandemic \u2014 a decision that immediately impacted more than 2,000 artists in six continents. The company is now moving forward with a plan to pay those artists for the gigs they lost out on.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday morning, Sofar Sounds said it will pay artists for canceled gigs and work to reschedule them, as well as introduce a Global Artist Fund with an initial goal of $250,000, joining a number of other other music companies pledging money toward live-music relief<\/a>. In a statement, Sofar noted that it is also launching online \u201clistening rooms,\u201d which will feature livestreaming performances, video premieres, and conversations with musicians around the world, as well as creating a global and local resource directory for its community of musicians. In the coming weeks, Sofar\u2019s artists can expect a rollout of online meetup opportunities, webinars, and educational sessions in partnership with Berklee College of Music. These developments are aimed at giving artists a much-needed sense of community.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOur whole focus right now is in how we can support artists and give them a broader stage to engage with an audience and with each other,\u201d CEO Jim Lucchese tells Rolling Stone, <\/em>in response to questions about how the team will monetize the new projects, now that Sofar is not able to sell tickets to live shows.<\/p>\n

Although Sofar\u2019s business model has sparked controversy<\/a> in the past \u2014 naysayers have scolded the company for paying its artists low rates while raising millions from investors \u2014 the startup benefits a group of people who have been hit uniquely hard by the current health crisis: fledgling new artists.  These new artists, who are paid between $100 and $150 by Sofar to perform, aren\u2019t to be confused with actively working, independent artists. Many have just started out on their career path, and they\u2019re green and unknown. Under COVID-19<\/a>\u2019s black cloud, concert cancellations are the new normal \u2014 affecting everyone from Coachella and SXSW to Pearl Jam, Madonna, and BTS \u2014 but unlike the pros, just-starting-out artists have no one to call.<\/p>\n

In normal times not marked by pandemic, Sofar Sound events give newcomers a chance to wet their feet, develop stage presence, and promote any upcoming \u201cofficial\u201d shows they may have booked, since few commercial venues are in the business of booking shows for small audiences. (A Sofar event usually accommodates a crowd of 60-100 and takes place in an atypical location \u2014 like an office space or gallery.) Sofar also takes on the responsibility of drawing the crowd, which means artists won\u2019t get stuck playing songs for their mom\u2019s book club who\u2019d normally show up to prevent them from playing to an empty room. Due to the three-act bill and a reputation of providing an \u201cengaged listening experience,\u201d artists also meet one another and expand their networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt creates a sense of community not only in this listening room that we\u2019ve created, but also in the online education and support programs where we can connect those artists with a pretty steady stream of stuff from the educational to the legal side of things,\u201d Lucchese says. \u201cThat also happens in just talking to other musicians and hearing from other artists. Bringing that community closer together in different ways \u2014 because we obviously can\u2019t do it in real life the same way we did before \u2014 is what this is about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucchese, who founded Spotify\u2019s Creator program before coming to Sofar a year ago, is a musician himself and his next gig, which was scheduled for Thursday night, also had to be canceled due to the coronavirus crisis. \u201cSeventy-five percent of the people who work here [at Sofar] are musicians,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a platform that\u2019s been created over 10 years by musicians for musicians. If you look at what we\u2019ve been doing over the last several months \u2014 from the team that we built to the new Artist Dashboard and resources that we launched months ago \u2014 this is a continuation of that work.\u201d<\/p>\n

New features like Wednesday\u2019s just-announced projects are put together with Sofar\u2019s artist base in mind, Lucchese says, and they are not merely day-long or week-long interests: \u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to do it for the rest of Sofar.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Earlier this month, Sofar Sounds, a startup that stages around 10,000 intimate concerts a year across 400 cities, had no choice but to suspend all its shows due to the coronavirus pandemic \u2014 a decision that immediately impacted more than 2,000 artists in six continents. The company is now moving forward with a plan to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-18 10:08:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}