UK government hands British musicians funding for overseas marketing activity
Acts such as Everything Everything and Cate Le Bon have been given an injection of government cash in order to support their promotional touring and marketing efforts as part of the British Phonographic Society’s (BPI) Music Exports Growth Scheme.
Everything Everything will use the investment to fund a US tour and promo their fourth album
A total of £249,385 has been awarded to UK independent music labels and companies, in order support the marketing and promotional costs of 21 British acts looking to build their fan bases overseas through live tours, digital engagement and other activity.
The artists selected for this round of funding will spend the money on a range of international activity, including advertising and PR around planned touring schedules, radio promotion, digital marketing, vinyl releases and access to the likes of South By Southwest festival.
Outside of traditional investment, electro-dance-pop fourpiece Boxed In have set their funding aside to host a ‘potential visual event’ at New York’s Moma gallery, while synthwave band Gunship will release a 360-degree virtual reality video of their new single.
The initiative falls under the government’s GREAT Britain campaign, which aims to promote the UK internationally as a destination for tourism, education and business. The Department for International Trade relaunched the scheme alongside the BPI in October 2016 and will provide a further £2.8m in similar grants until 2020.
Mark Garnier, international trade minister, said: “In 2015, music contributed more than £4bn to the UK economy and five of the world’s top ten selling artists were British.
“In the three months since the re-launch of the Music Exports Growth Scheme in October, we have awarded almost a quarter of a million pounds of funding to UK acts looking to break into international markets. Britain has an incredible pool of raw talent and, through our GREAT campaign, we will continue to help budding artists take the next step towards global success.”
Gunship added: “A limited marketing budget for our debut album campaign forced us to learn how to make the most of every penny and to grasp every opportunity to innovate with our strategy. With the award of this funding we will be able to take that same mentality and be exponentially more effective in growing our already-passionate US fan-base.”