‘It has allowed me to prioritise my art,’ says songster Holly
EMERGING artist Holly Munro says her ‘whole career has changed’ since she started receiving the Basic Income for the Arts payment last September.
‘It’s made me able to prioritise my art more than ever before,’ the talented 25-year-old singersongwriter told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘If you don’t have a label backing you financially or a manager or something, there’s a lot of cost in terms of creating music videos, which can cost around €1,000, or press shots, which are anywhere from €300 to €700 depending on who you work with.
‘Then there’s paying your band, paying for equipment or studio time or mixing, mastering… there’s so much cost to that.’
The Dubliner, whose electronicinfused folk pop has been endorsed by BBC 6 Music, said that she would previously have had to work for months to save up for something like a music video.
‘I can see the path since receiving the grant – it’s allowed me to take the next step and really position myself as an emerging artist.
‘I got [invited to] things such as [new music showcase event] Ireland Music Week this year, which is a great opportunity for upcoming artists to present their music in front of international delegates and the Irish industry.
‘Also, I have no debt and that is because of getting the grant as well.’
Munro, who still does part-time freelance work in marketing and events, said she felt like she had ‘won the lotto’ when she was randomly picked for the basic income trial, having met its application requirements.
She describes ‘five years of real grafting’ beforehand, working as a studio backing singer and writing and releasing under the name Halli – as well as touring with her brothers, the folk duo Hudson Taylor.
She said that traditional revenue streams for musicians such as merchandise and touring are now more costly for the artist, ‘but in the long run, that’s probably going to be the only way you’re going to get paid’.
Streaming platforms like Spotify pay artists notoriously small amounts per listen, while record labels are more threadbare operations than before due to a lack of demand for physical copies of music.
‘Maybe 20 years ago, you would work with a label, and they’d give you an advance or something,’ Munro said. ‘But that rarely happens now. It’s more money towards marketing or something specific – it’s not yours.’
She said that while other services exist apart from Spotify, it’s the ‘main one that everybody talks about – even your labels, your managers, your press people… Everyone always wants to know your Spotify numbers.
‘If you said you weren’t going to use that service because they don’t pay people properly, you’d isolate yourself because most people are on Spotify. So it does put you in a really tough position where you kind of have to settle for something that’s not good enough.’