MEM’s advocacy in the local music ecosystem began in 2021 as an outgrowth of our work on the COVID artist emergency fund in partnership with ArtsMemphis, Memphis Music Initiative and Hyde Family Foundation.
In April of 2020 as we prepared to issue the first relief grants, we didn’t understand what lay ahead of us in terms of the length and breadth of pandemic shutdowns. We asked artists in that initial application to prove they were working musicians, and to submit a list of canceled gigs along with how much money they’d lost. It was during that review process that something we’d known anecdotally became a data-supported fact that we could not ignore: our musicians were being paid the same amount per gig that they’d been paid since the 1980s. Over and over, we reviewed applications listing 20-30 canceled gigs and a total loss of $2,000-3,000.
As we saw laid plain the crisis of our live music economy, we knew that something had to be done to address it and that we were in a unique position to be the ones to do it. We subsidize working musicians because we believe that cities need to see music not just as an industry, but as an ecosystem, and musicians not just as small businesses in a free market but as cultural assets in need of subsidy to survive for the betterment of all. In the summer of 2021, after one full year of COVID closures and multiple rounds of relief grants paid, we officially launched our advocacy arm with the first Music Export Memphis compensation study. You can check out the findings from that study and 2022 – and keep reading for the 2023 report + what’s next!
Fair Pay Partners
Alongside the release of this year’s study we’re excited to launch our Fair Pay campaign. Our Fair Pay Partners meet one or more of the following standards:
- Increased their minimum per musician pay to $250 based on MEM’s 2021 guidance
- Already held their own above-market-rate payment standards for musicians, including some with competitive hourly rates
- Provide other support and benefits, in addition to compensation, to ensure a fair employment environment for musicians and to compensate artists for their creative work – including artists of all ages.
What's next?
We need to advocate for change at the city and state level to support better conditions for working musicians – and you can help! Click the links below to find your Memphis City Councilor and Shelby County Commissioner – contact them to share your support for city and county policy to support fair employment practices in the arts. Want to know more about what this could look like for Memphis? We recommend starting with the UK Musicians’ Union’s Fair Play Guide – it’s a source of inspiration for us!
For our part, we aim to expand our Fair Pay Partners to include broader fair employment practices for musicians and artists – and then do the work to grow the number of entities booking musicians who meet those standards. Other cities across the country also have stagnant wages and poor employment conditions in their live music ecosystems – Memphis is not the only one, but we can be the first to find innovative solutions.