Financial Assistance for Freelance Musicians
Freelance musicians - and other independent artists! Please take advantage of both state and federal relief programs. We deserve a living wage and emergency assistance like everyone else. We have been conditioned to think we don’t. But we do!
Federal small business “loan”
My friend, Colleen, sent me this link, for the U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) Economic Injury Disaster Loan Emergency Advance.
It appears to give any business $10,000 within a few days, as an “emergency advance” that does not need to be paid back if a few conditions are met, one being that the money goes towards payroll.
I applied for it today. It took five minutes. Definitely do this. No promises as I am still learning. But it absolutely cannot hurt.
Freelance musicians are independent contractors and should count, in this case, as a business, whether you are incorporated as an LLC or not.
I believe that for a sole proprietorship (your default status if you are an independent contractor not incorporated as an LLC), paying your own salary counts as payroll…meaning you would not have to pay back the $10K.
But that is obviously an important thing to figure out.
There is a write-up on the program in Forbes, here.
I will keep information on this coming as I learn more.
2. State-by-state unemployment claims
Check to see if your state is allowing self-employed workers to file for unemployment. There is a federal supplement of $600 per week, if you are able to enroll.
Here is the information for Vermont.
There is a new program in Vermont for self-employed people to receive unemployment checks during COVID. They are still working out the kinks and money will probably not come for a couple weeks.
You should sign up for this newsletter to receive updates on the program as it is finalized.
There is a federal supplement of $600 per week on top of your determined benefits, which are based on lost income. They aren’t yet sure how they are verifying income for artists.
But the benefits should be retroactive and start at your date of unemployment - the last day you were able to work. For me that was March 6th.
The line is slammed but I was able to complete the call in under an hour with some persistence during the initial call. Their system only lets so many people be on hold at once so you have to keep trying, i.e. call every minute for 10 minutes.
Call the office. You cannot initiate a claim for the new self-employment program online.
(877) 214-3330
This line is slammed at the moment. I had to call twelve or so times over a 15-minute period to even get on hold. Once on hold, I had to wait about a half hour.
ALL YOU WILL NEED is your basic info - DOB, SSN, etc.
From there, they will guide you. Be nice to them. They are slammed.
There will be initial correspondence in the physical mail.
I was told that the numbers will be wrong. It might just say $0 as income, because they haven’t set up the system for verifying self-employment income.
So don’t freak out at the income numbers of first mailing.
Just stay tuned to the newsletter about next steps.
Be safe and feel your full range of human feelings! :)