Yes. All recording applications are expected to meet the Open Fund criteria concerning artistic quality, reaching people, and project and financial management.
It is important to clearly describe your artistic vision for the recording and the relevant experience of you, your creative collaborators and the production team. Tell us why this is the right time for you to produce this album – creatively, and in terms of the momentum it will allow you to build and/or the opportunities it will help you to access.
We want to ensure that our funded projects reach a wide range of people, and so we need to know how you will maximise audience reach through sales, marketing and distribution, including the names of professional companies or individuals you might work with, along with evidence of schedules and plans where appropriate. It would be useful to tell us what you know about your current and potential audience and how you currently reach them.
We will expect you to submit realistic budgets, broken-down to include daily rates for studio hire and artist fees at industry-level rates, such as those outlined in guidance from the Musicians Union. If you are working with a label, we would expect to see the label making a fair contribution towards the recording or its associated costs such as marketing and distribution. Other co-funding might include projected sales income, crowdfunding or in-kind costs offered by the applicant or fellow band members. Freelance session musicians should always be paid at industry rates.