Welsh Music businesses benefit from funding as unique as their music
Date Posted: 31st July 2008
Welsh Music Foundation are proud to announce the first successful companies to receive funding as part of their ‘Create, Retain, Exploit’ scheme.
Sponsored by the Welsh Assembly Government, ‘Create, Retain, Exploit’ is a pilot project that made available £25,000 to the music industry in Wales.
The fund offered up to £5,000 in match funding to Welsh music businesses who had projects that would retain music intellectual property (IP) in Wales or exploit existing Welsh IP.
A panel that included Mark Bowen of Wichita Records, Dai Davies – former head of Sanctuary and Phil Patterson, Head of Music Exports for UK Trade & Investment, made the selections as well as offering advice to the companies that submitted projects.
Successful applicants included the composer John Hardy who is to use the fund to purchase recording of his works from the BBC to release and fellow Cardiff Record label My Kung Fu who are set to maximise the marketing of their next release from ex-Gorkys Richard James.
Online music store Sebon will now go through a make over and provide information on copyright and the music industry to its users. North Wales label Sain will be putting the funding towards the development of a download site and South Wales hip-hop collective Associated Minds will be promoting the next Mudmowth album with their investment. Bronzerat Records, home to Seasick Steve, will also have funding towards their next Gemma Ray release.
The fund will be administered as a ‘repayable grant’ whereby companies will start to repay back into the fund once they have recouped the money that the companies themselves have invested in the project. This is done at a rate of 20% of the income the project attracts after ‘breakeven’ point. The funding will be awarded to the companies in a series of sessions over the next month, the first of which took place this week whereby Carl Morris of My Kung Fu and John Rostron of Sebon were presented with their cheques by Andrew Williams, Director of WMF (attached photo).John Hardy of John Hardy Music also received the funding he was awarded.
Andrew Williams, Director of WMF said: “The fund is very important given the difficulty that music companies have with cash flow and attracting investment from traditional funders as the sector is seen as high risk, yet the potential is massive!
“The fund should allow companies to take advantage of opportunities that can appear and disappear so suddenly. In a trend-led industry, access to just small funds can make a great difference”.
It is hoped further applications will be invited for the remainder of the funding in coming weeks.
