Theo Love looked into the camera, took a breath and read aloud the survey comments about the city’s music grants to the Austin Music Commission.
Venues are suffering and denied funds that were given to musicians who have not performed for years.
It was the biggest help to buy the piece of equipment that we couldn’t afford.
This thing was messed up in every way.
Love edited that last one on the fly. No f-bombs in a public meeting.
Love — a musician on the advisory panel for Austin Texas Musicians, a nonprofit that did the survey — cringed as he repeated some of the criticisms during the January 2025 meeting he attended via a video call. But he wasn’t surprised. Every year, there are complaints, suspicions and whispers about who gets the grants and why.
Maybe it was DEI. Maybe I made too much money. Maybe it was politics or cherrypicking or rigged applications.
But the reasons behind who wins the Live Music Fund grants are more complicated. An Austin Current review of application scores, city policies, emails, presentations and Music Commission meetings shows the 2024 grants, the last ones awarded, were shaped by three colliding forces: priorities, scoring and confusion.
First, priorities. City staffers prioritized diversity, but avoided race-based DEI questions, instead focusing on what they considered related issues: health care, bank accounts, residence in traditionally high poverty census tracts.
Second, scoring. Half of the application points went to equity measures. Out of a possible 130 points, 65 were set aside for “limited access to services” and “accessibility.”
Third, confusion. Some musicians didn’t understand how the grading system worked. They thought their music experience would carry more weight than it did and didn’t understand the documentation requirements. Many musicians never got their scores because city staffers said they did not have access to them, preventing artists from seeing where they lost points and how they might improve in the future.
In March, for the first time since 2024, the city will announce the winners of $7 million in Live Music Fund grants. More than 800 applications were submitted and 380 will receive awards.
This time, staffers say they’re trying to be more transparent. They may put applicants’ scores in their notification letters, said Laura Odegaard, acting division manager of Austin Arts, Culture, Music, and Entertainment, the department that oversees the Live Music Fund. They also want to produce a video explaining how the scoring works.
Odegaard knows the scoring trips people up. At a recent department staff meeting, one employee indicated confusion about the process.
“We have a big problem if, even internally, we don’t know,” she said. “We haven’t explained things well enough.”
‘A different way to get there’
For 45 years, the city has used Hotel Occupancy Taxes to fund grants for cultural artists, including musicians, dancers, singers, visual artists, actors and filmmakers. The tax generates more than $20 million a year for cultural arts grants.
In 2019, the city passed an ordinance allowing hotel tax money to flow into the newly created Live Music Fund to help musicians, independent promoters and live music venues. Artists use the money to pay their bands, record albums, cover stage rental and fund other needs.
“The overarching goal has always been to stabilize and strengthen the ecosystem,” said Nagavalli Medicharla, chair of the city’s Music Commission.
But Covid-19 delayed the program for years. The city distributed millions of dollars in emergency funding for artists during a pandemic that trapped people in their homes and left musicians without work.
In 2023, after Covid subsided, the Live Music Fund finally took shape. The Economic Development Department took charge of the grants. It hired the Long Center to score applications, keep data and oversee contracts with musicians.
About $3.5 million was awarded to 368 of the 660 applicants. Grants ranged from $5,000 to $10,000.
Theo Love, 37, was among the winners. He used his $10,000 grant to hold showcases for his rock-influenced hip hop music, make an album, pay a band and hire dancers for online content. As a queer Black man, he said, he felt seen and lucky to be able to pay other artists in minority groups.
“I feel like I was blessed to get that grant,” Love said.
Still, complaints rolled in from other musicians, saying the application was too complicated and seemed more geared toward tourism and events. Austin Texas Musicians, which advocates for local artists, communicated those concerns to the city. Among the comments:
When will it ever really be about helping musicians?
I’d say that whoever put this together didn’t bother to talk to even one local musician, such as myself or pretty much any and all of my musician friends.
I felt it was way more based on helping someone throw an event than it was for artists to create art.
So in 2024, the application changed. This time it offered more flexibility for music projects. It also focused more on equity.
By then DEI efforts were under fire both nationally and in Texas, but the department leaned into its diversity strategy.
Erica Shamaly, manager of the Music and Entertainment Division, later told the city’s Music Commission the legal department said they could not ask about race , so the city asked other questions.
They gave extra points for musicians with limited health care. Those who lived in qualified census tracts, had programs for non-English speakers and did not have a bank account also got a boost.
“It was just a different way to get there,” Shamaly said.
The scores
When the 2024 awards came out, musicians revolted. Long-time artists didn’t understand why they hadn’t won. Applicants complained they felt punished for having health care and bank accounts.
It came down to the way the applications were scored: Of the 130 possible points, 65 were determined by local economic impact, programing, tourism marketing strategies and whether the applicant had received a grant the previous year.
The rest of the points were under categories called “limited access to services” and “accessibility.”
Musicians uploaded their applications into a computer program that spit out the initial scores.
Reviewers scoured the applications, ensuring the musicians had uploaded proof for the points the machine gave them. For example, applicants who said they had accessibility features for audiences had to submit evidence such as photos or programs.
If their applications had evidence, musicians kept the points. If not, the reviewer subtracted those points. If something was unclear, the reviewer asked for a second opinion and tried to err on the side of the applicant, Odegaard said.
Of all the hotel tax funded grants, the Live Music Fund is the only one graded primarily by automation. There are no human panels or judges. That’s because the Live Music Fund grants came out after the pandemic, when the city processed relief applications online and liked its efficiency, Odegaard said.
When the grants came out in August 2024, the results shocked musicians. More than 1,000 people applied, but only 137 received grants because the city issued larger awards. Most musicians got $30,000. Live music venues got $60,000.
Applicants then realized how strongly the application changes had affected their scores.
This time, Love didn’t win a grant, but he knew where he went wrong. He had not put enough thought into his own experiences with accessibility and audience diversity.
“I learned that mistake on that one because that became a huge scoring part, but the thing that was, I didn’t even think, ‘Oh wait, I played several gigs where there’s someone ASL interpreting.’ You know it, but you’re not always thinking of those things.”
Musicians have to remember they’re running a business and part of that means keeping an archive of all of their work, which helps with applications, he said.
Ruby Dice, who plays country soul, won $30,000 in 2024. She’d lost out on the 2023 grants because, she said, “I don’t think I understood the assignment.”
The goal, she realized, was to energize and reflect the Austin music scene. So in 2024, she devoted two weeks to creating a hyperlocal proposal that ultimately led to a documentary about writing and recording an Austin-focused album.
The documentary, which will be released in June, includes interviews with local artists about the city’s music scene and what makes Austin so special, she said.
Dice said she never could have done that without the Live Music Fund.
“It really does feed back into the art community here in town,” she said. “I think that’s really important, because the healthier the art economy is, the more artists are going to come to this town and make it cool and funky.”
‘We’re going to get there’
Those who didn’t win grants remained frustrated for months, saying the city wasn’t being transparent.
“We did hear a lot of feedback from a lot of our musicians on that,” said Pat Buchta, chief executive officer of Austin Texas Musicians. “It was simply like, ‘Can we see our scores? Can we see why we scored more in one area or another?’ And they said, ‘Well, no, we don’t have access to that information.’”
Odegaard said she doesn’t know why that happened.
“If someone requests their score, they can receive their score,” she said. “They can receive their comments. They can talk to staff and understand why they scored that way.”
By the end of 2024, the Live Music Fund grants remained a sore spot. The head of the Economic Development Department retired in December 2024, six months before a city audit determined she approved Live Music Fund grants to four arts groups who were not eligible.
The city created in February 2025 Austin Arts, Culture, Music, and Entertainment, the standalone department handling all cultural arts and live music fund grants. The department paused the grants to launch a “creative reset.”
“The thing that was most on fire when AACME was first formed were questions around funding,” she said. “It’s always, always going to be the most hot-button issue because the demand is so much higher than what we have available.”
The department spent much of the year holding meetings and town halls and asking people to weigh in on the arts grants. Then the city made big changes.
The 2025 applications focused less on equity questions and more on experience and local economic impact. There won’t be enough money for everyone, Odegaard said.
While the current system may not be perfect, Buchta said, it’s getting increasingly consistent.
“We’re going to get there,” he said. “It just takes time.”