COVID-19 Support Resources for Musicians

I’m feeling a little helpless right now and am hoping that I can make myself feel better by passing on some information that might be useful to some.

I’ve come across some online resources with information that may be helpful to musicians impacted by COVID. Haze Guitars is based in Ireland but this site and my email newsletter is read by people all over the world. I can't reflect all of those but I'll try to hit some at least.

UK

Help Musicians is a UK-based independent charity to, well, help musicians. They’ve set up a dedicated web site at coronamusicians.info as a sort of repository of links and info to try support musicians through the Corona mess. They have some advice around financial and legal matters but it’s great to see they also have sections with resources for physical and mental health. The site is UK-centric but these latter sections should be universally applicable.

Also in the UK, the Musician’s Union has some advice for music teachers during the COVID-19 outbreak. The Musician’s Union Corona virus page has a lot of useful stuff for theatre, orchestral, and gigging musicians too. Well worth a read if you’re in the UK.

US

The best round-up of resources I’ve been able to find for US-based readers is hosted at Billboard. It’s got a pretty full list of national and state bodies and funds that may be able to help. I’m pleased to see some nods towards support for tour crew here (although it’d be nice to see more). Check it out and hopefully you can find something useful.

Americans for the Arts has a resource list with a broader scope. Check that too.

The Recording Academy’s charity, MusiCares has a COVID-19 Relief Fund and may be able to help with lost income due to cancelled gigs.

Ireland

I’m disappointed that I can’t report a similar set of resources for Irish musicians. The Musician’s Union of Ireland has a link to the Irish government’s application for COVID-19 Unemployment Benefit which currently provides payment for a period of 6 weeks. The application appears to be pretty quick and straightforward and I’d encourage anyone impacted by Corona (musician, crew, or non-music related employee or self-employed person) to check it out. More information on how to apply here.

The rest of the world

Sorry. I can’t pull this together for everyone. I wish I could do more but, apart from anything else, the language-barrier for local resources makes me mostly useless there.

An internet search for something like <my country> coronavirus support for musicians should hopefully get you on the right track. If you can’t find anything relevant, you might try substituting ‘freelancers’ or similar in place of ‘musicians’.

I've got to mention that I've no personal experience of any of the resources listed above so you definitely shouldn't read this as an endorsement. I wish I could give you more than this short list. I realise it isn’t much but hopefully it might help someone out. If you’re impacted, maybe you can do a little digging in one of the links above and maybe keep your fingers crossed.

I’ll keep mine crossed too — after all, musicians are paying my wages. 😉

Good luck.

Stay safe. Take care of yourselves and each other.