Image credit: gov.uk

As the UK’s culture recovery fund brings some much needed relief to the country’s music industry, their payouts have raised some questions.

The UK government are providing some much needed relief to the arts sector in the wake of the Coronavirus shutdowns. Their culture recovery fund has come into question though, the latest controversy being a company based in Los Angeles supposedly receiving the largest funding of all.

Paradigm Agency received £967,679 in funding from the UK’s relief fund. Confusion has arisen here as they share the name with merged company Paradigm Talent Agency who are based in Los Angeles.

The primary criteria for the funding was, obviously, that any companies applying were based in England. The US talent agency, responsible for huge acts like Ed Sheeran and Coldplay, would obviously be in hot water with the many people in the arts industry struggling to get by if they received the largest funding of any company so far from the UK’s culture recovery fund.

The LA based agency acquired a 50% stake in London’s CODA agency back in 2014 and subsequently took the Paradigm name in a full company merger. So we can put the pitchforks down, the UK aren’t bailing out any foreign companies (that we’re aware of… yet!)

Other companies have come under, perhaps more justified, scrutiny for their funding allocation. The second criteria for funding required the company applying to have been “financially sustainable before Covid-19 but are now at imminent risk of failure and have exhausted all other options”.

Two big British music brands, Boileroom and Resident Advisor, have been questioned for their funds of £791,652 and £750,000 respectively. Boileroom reported a net loss of £1.3 million in 2019 whilst Resident Advisor’s funding received criticism for DJs.