Support The Sound campaign launched to promote fair pay for artists

A new initiative to promote the fair pay of musicians has been launched by the teams behind Tbilisi’s Bassiani and New York’s Basement, named Support The Sound.

The campaign aims to support artists with fair revenue when their music is played at a club or festival, calling it a “necessary” tool to recognise the artists whose music “fuels DJ sets”.

The long-term project is set up using Aslice, a revenue-sharing software tool for musicians set up by DJ and producer DVS1 in 2022. "When Bassiani and Basement reached out to our team with this idea and expressed that they want to help change things for the better, it truly excited us", he says.

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"Support The Sound plans to embrace a culture of sharing and that resonates deeply with the values of our service. Why wouldn't we support the sound? Our industry would be nothing without the music."

The campaign has so far been backed by Amsterdam’s Dekmantel, Brussels’ Fuse, Tokyo’s Womb, Los Angeles’ Synthetik Minds, and more.

Support The Sound aims to establish a new booking approach where earnings made by DJs during their performances would be distributed fairly by using Aslice’s “community-connecting platform”.

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Support The Sound member are asked to encourage resident DJs to submit playlists to promoters, clubs, and festivals, with a future commitment to share revenues in order to “lessen the income disparity between working DJs and producers”.

"We hope the collective action of Support The Sound will cause a ripple effect that improves our entire industry,” says Aslice CEO Ethan Holben. “With DJs sharing via Aslice, producers receive compensation for the use of their work.”

“At the same time, clubs and festivals gain easy access to streamlined playlist data for their national Performance Rights Organization, ultimately ensuring that music producers get the royalties they're legally entitled to."

Find out more about Support The Sound here.

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Assistant Editor, follow her on Twitter