Become a Musician-Owner at Groupmuse
Since 2013, Groupmuse has focused on organizing intimate concerts that connect local musicians with local audiences. Now we’re offering musicians, the talent and workforce behind all these concerts, a path towards owning Groupmuse itself.
Groupmuse has run on de facto cooperative principles for a long time, but the pandemic provided a catalyst and an opportunity for us to restructure how we work. In fall 2020, our founders stepped back as the sole “owners” of Groupmuse and welcomed our entire staff to become “Worker-Owners” with equal voice and decision-making agency in the organization.
At Groupmuse, we navigate our work with three core values: Listening, Heart, and Impact. This means that being part of Groupmuse isn’t like joining other organizations. We don’t command and control each others’ time and work. Instead, we try to set our egos aside, and let work get done by those who have the energy, bandwidth, and skills to do it, as long as they’re actively listening to their co-workers (with heart) and focusing on impact. We negotiate our salaries openly with our team. We often talk about “the Groupmuse ecosystem” and try to listen to what Groupmuse wants to be in the world.
As we listened, it became very clear that musicians deserved a seat at the table, too. So in early 2021, the Musician Council was formed to design and craft what Musician-Ownership would look like at Groupmuse. Today, we proudly share that work and open the path for the next round of Musician-Owners at Groupmuse.
>> Fill out an interest form to join here <<
Read our Musician Owner Agreement in full here
Ask us any questions in the Groupmuse Discord here
What exactly does Musician-Ownership mean?
Musician-Ownership means you own a piece of Groupmuse. If the company is successful, you share in that success. While we don’t ever plan to sell Groupmuse to the highest bidder, there are lots of ways that a successful Groupmuse cooperative can give back to the community of employees and musicians who own it.
In practice, it means joining a team of staff and musicians who contribute their time, work, and music to Groupmuse’s community. If you want to help build your local Groupmuse community, you’ll join a local Circle of organizers, collaborate on events, build trust, generate resources, and collectively decide how to spend those resources. If you want to help build Groupmuse globally, you’ll collaborate with our entire team to advance the movement (including other successful and committed musicians worldwide, software engineers, fundraisers, civic organizers, etc.). You’ll have extra backend privileges on groupmuse.com to see everything that’s going on in the ecosystem. You’ll be able to propose projects, request funding, and can even use our Groupmuse Foundation 501(c)(3) as a fiscal sponsor. And you’ll also be a public representative for Groupmuse — use that role however best advances the movement.
In essence, you’ll be a member of the team. When you have time, we’ll support you in whatever projects you want to work on (which are aligned with Groupmuse’s work and our core values). And when you don’t have time, we’ll encourage you to step back and play a passive advisory role while you jump into your other work. Some of our Worker-Owners are full-time, others are part-time. Some of our Musician-Owners clock ~5 hours per week, others can only attend a single meeting every few weeks. Each owner will have a different relationship with Groupmuse, and we want to find one that’s reciprocal for everyone. But one thing will certainly be different — it will belong to you in a new way. We’re here to support each other.
If you’re interested, please fill out this interest form. Each cohort will be relatively small, and while we want successful, busy musicians to be welcome here just as much as anyone else, we’d like to stay focused right now on people who have bandwidth to contribute. In light of that, we’re asking that new Musician-Owners recruit a single new Groupmuse host or venue and play a successful show there to join the cooperative (instead of paying the one-time $50 fee written into the Musician-Ownership agreement). We’re also hoping that new members will be able to attend local Circle meetings 1–2 times per month to help build their community’s art scene directly.
The big plan is to eventually have thousands of Musician-Owners, becoming one of the largest musician cooperatives in the world. We believe that Groupmuse can support musicians’ careers in more ways than just some extra gigs, so let’s create that reality together!
Or if you just want to chat for now, we’d love to see you in the Groupmuse Discord. (Please email us at support@groupmuse.com to get a new invitation link if this Discord invitation is expired by the time you read this article!)
Here’s to the next generation of live music!
