Austrian Music Fund — Production Funding (Produktionsförderung, Call 62)

This is release money. The Austrian Music Fund pays up to half the cost of producing a record — an album, or a title-based project that puts out at least three tracks within twelve months — for physical or digital release. The cap is EUR 50,000, with optional add-ons of up to EUR 5,000 for a music video and EUR 3,000 for basic marketing.

You qualify as an individual whose main residence is in Austria, or as a company based there, and you must carry the main responsibility for the production. Advertising music, film music and sampler productions are excluded. Two timing rules catch people out: the production must not be financeable without the grant, and final mastering must not be complete when the decision is made. Costs incurred abroad cannot be funded. The 50% is calculated against the full production volume, which includes work you and others contribute unpaid, so that labour has to be documented rather than left out.

Submissions go through the fund's online platform, which needs its own login, and close at 23:59 on the deadline day. You upload an application form and a costing form, two to four demo tracks as MP3s, a photo, a signed undertaking to release the record (from a label if you have one, otherwise from you alone), and proof of residence or a company register extract. Applied and been funded before? Add sales figures, press coverage and a development concept.

An industry jury decides. The published criteria are the recording's value as cultural output with an Austrian character, the professionalism of the production, and its commercial prospects at home and abroad. Guidelines and forms are in German.