Welcome to Initiative Musik

“We are stage, microphone, amplifier and fan club all at the same time. Initiative Musik is the promotion and export office for the German music industry. As the support platform for the German Federal Government and the music industry, we support the presentation and dissemination of music from Germany both at home and abroad. Yet Initiative Musik doesn’t live from subsidies alone, it is also creating structures that promote the music industry and individual artists – in the first ten years, we’ve initiated more than three thousand funding projects. Our team is happy to answer any of your questions about our funding programmes. You can find all the relevant information about our sponsorship programme for musicians and music companies from all genres of popular music on our website. Furthermore, our newsletter and social media channels also provide additional information about funding and workshop opportunities. Please think of us as a service centre for any questions you may have about applications and feel free to share your ideas with us.”

Ina Keßler
Initiative Musik’s Managing Director

Our Goals

Initiative Musik’s goals are to promote and support:

New musical talent from all genres of popular music, including rock, hip-hop, electronic music, experimental pop music and jazz;
The integration of people with immigrant backgrounds;
The dissemination of music from Germany both at home and abroad;
And to support live-music clubs in Germany.

Our Sponsorship Programmes

Funding instruments include the following sponsorship and grant programmes:

Artist Sponsorships, since 2008
Infrastructure Grants, since 2008
Short-Tour Sponsorships, since 2010
APPLAUS – Award for independent venue programming, since 2012
Digitisation of performance technology in live-music venues in Germany, since 2016
Technical upgrades and renovation needs in live-music venues in Germany, since 2017

The Main Office in Berlin

Initiative Musik’s main office in Berlin handles everything to do with the sponsorship programmes. Furthermore, it also initiates and realises its own projects for strengthening the German music industry.

Sponsorship Programme Guidance

Our project managers are happy to provide guidance for any questions about our sponsorship programmes. We check all applications for plausibility using formal criteria. Then we prepare the necessary documents for the voting by the sponsorship jury and the Initiative Musik Advisory Board. If the project is accepted, we draw up a sponsorship contract with the applicant and support them in realising the project until an end-of-use verification.

Please give us a call if you have any questions about the process. Contact persons and office hours can be found in each of the sponsorship areas.

Initiative Musik’s Own Projects

Aside from our sponsorship programmes, we also initiate and realise numerous projects and dialogue forums of our own. We also actively promote the German music industry in cooperation with the German federal states and in various regions throughout the country.

Sponsorships Practices

Our sponsorship funds are granted via application. The descriptions of all the programmes and submission deadlines can be found in the Sponsorship section.

Our sponsorship practices are continuously being developed as the market changes and by integrating applicant feedback. We attempt to provide funds for the music industry as quickly and as unbureaucratically as possible while drawing on our Advisory Board’s wealth of experience and the expertise of our jury members and other specialists. We draw up private-law sponsorship contracts with the applicants for dispersing federal funds.

Initiative Musik – More than Sponsorship

Another of our many tasks is to raise more funding for sponsorships. For instance, we want to motivate companies from the business world as well as public and private financiers to do more for up-and-coming professional musicians. Initiative Musik’s own projects are usually structural or export-oriented, which means they are always non-commercial and therefore not-for-profit projects.

Network Meetings and Dialogue Forums

We regularly conduct expert hearings to clarify open questions, develop new topics and establish cooperations. We’ve developed dialogue formats working with the music industry – including, for example, the Music Industry Agenda in 2018. At this conference, held in cooperation with the Tagesspiegel newspaper in Berlin, the sixteen most-important associations and institutions of the music industry met for joint public discussions with important representatives from the federal government and the opposition parties for the first time. One of the conference’s goals was to directly communicate the industry’s specific needs to politicians and take a solutions-oriented approach about how to create better conditions for people making music in Germany. This necessitates strong networks, for which Initiative Musik offers a nationwide platform.

At the federal level, we also support the expansion of regional Pop Music Offices. Our main focus here is on establishing regional advisory and funding structures.

In an international context, we participate in the European Music Export Exchange (EMEE) and in the European Talent Exchange Programme (ETEP), the latter funded in part by the EU. Another field of activity for our organisation is to safeguard the interests of the German music industry with regard to new European funding programmes, an example of this being Music Moves Europe, a pilot programme of the European Commission. Additionally, we are also committed to the creation of a separate funding area for the music sector in the coming period of the EU’s Creative Europe programme starting in 2021.