We Need Your SupportĀ
DMY Magazine (formerly Dummy Magazine) has been supporting emerging artists since it launched as a print magazine in 2005.Ā
Since then the magazine has moved entirely online and DMY has not only supported thousands of emerging (and established) artists and labels but it has also employed scores of editors, journalists and A&Rs who have gone on to work at companies like The Fader, Dazed, XL, Mixcloud, Believe and many others. We are proud of our record of giving talented young people important opportunities in the music industry and we always pay the London Living Wage as a minimum.
More recently we launched our unique artist services company (DMY Artists) combining editorial and content creation with distribution and publishing to further support the careers of emerging artists while creating a new revenue model for DMY. So far we have signed over 200 artists, released over 1,000 tracks and generated over 100 million streams. To be clear DMY Artists is in good health and has a clear, sustainable, business model.
Unfortunately, during the pandemic, DMY Magazine received no financial support from The Arts Council despite applying to the Culture Recovery Fund. In fact we received a formal apology from the Arts Council in relation to this but no money at all.
When we launched as a print magazine (and when we went online) our main revenue stream was advertising revenue from record labels and brands, but in recent years that revenue stream has decreased significantly with almost all ad spend going directly to Google and Meta (Facebook / Instagram). This is an industry wide problem, not just for DMY Magazine, as seen from recent closures of other online music magazines.
DMY Magazine still receives important partnership revenue from brands and festivals but it isn't enough to pay music journalists, photographers and videographers fairly to make as much great content and support as many emerging artists as we would like. And we always pay our contributors - asking people to work for free is not the way forward.
So we are launching a new Community model whereby the people who have followed, read, enjoyed and maybe benefitted from what DMY does can support what we do while engaging with other music fans, emerging artists and industry executives (who also care about independent music and media) plus receive some nice perks and benefits in return. Ā Also, if you are a PR, label, promoter, festival, A&R or established artist and you appreciate what we do then please consider signing up.
If this model is successful then it will secure the future of DMY Magazine and enable us to keep supporting emerging artists editorially like we have been doing for the past 18 years.
Welcome to the DMY Community and thank you, in advance, for your support š
Paul Benney, Founder