The New Music Creator Fund offers grants to individual music creators working in any genre who need support to reach the next stage of their creative practice.
Donor Name: New Music USA
State: Selected States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 11/21/2025
Size of the Grant: $1000 to $10,000
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
The program supports costs related to the creation of new work and new projects developed in collaboration with other artists and practitioners. Individual performers may also apply if their collaborator is a music creator.
Funding Information
Applicants are invited to indicate their interest in being considered for the Thea Musgrave Performer-Composer Collaboration Grant, an annual award of $10,000 that is awarded through the Creator Fund. Please note that the average Creator Fund grant is $3,000, with awards made up to $5,000.
The Program does support
If awarded, the funds could be used in many ways. They envision that costs incurred through your collaborative work may include:
- Support for the time you need to create new material and initiate new collaborations with your proposed artist(s)
- Creation fees for a work in progress that does not have additional support
- Performer or other collaborator fees
- Project specific equipment
- Recording costs
- PR/marketing
- Technical assistance/skills building
- Support for digital presentation/creation of music videos
- Workshopping
- Joint R&D (research and development) into new project ideas
- Other costs you consider to be essential e.g. childcare for yourself or a collaborating artist
Eligibility Criteria
They have made changes to eligibility criteria to improve assessment process. Applicants must complete an eligibility quiz before accessing the application. They ask that you pay close attention to the following changes before reading the complete criteria below:
- All applicants will now be required to watch (live or by viewing on demand) the Creator Fund Application Webinar which will take place on Wednesday, October 22, from 2-3pm ET – Register HERE. The webinar will be available on the program page for those who cannot attend in real time. Reporting your attendance/viewing will be based on the honor system – thank you in advance for your cooperation!
- As stated above, to maintain alignment with the new regional cycles and to ensure equitable access for applicants from different geographic regions, all Creator Fund applicants (including those in New York) can only apply to the program every 2 years.
Age/Career Stage
- Students are not eligible for the New Music Creator Fund, with the exception of PhD/DMA candidates who have completed coursework and are considered ABD (All But Dissertation). ABD candidates are eligible to apply.
- Applicants must be at least 21 years of age.
- Applicants must have a minimum of 3 years of experience as a professional musician. They define professional musicians as those who have received public performances of their work or who regularly perform music publicly. In both cases they would expect you to have received financial compensation for at least some of your work.
Geography
- For this year’s cycle, the applicant must be a music creator based in New York State or one of the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic or Midwest states listed above.
For more information, visit New Music USA.
