Play Tulsa Music Relaunches With $350,000 To Support Tulsa’s Music Scene

A program to boost the music industry in Tulsa County is back with the largest amount of funding in its history. Play Tulsa Music is a music recovery program created by the Tulsa Office of Film, Music, Arts & Culture. Abby Kurin with the office said the program is back with $350,000 to support Tulsa’s music scene.

"It helps the venue, it helps our local artists, and it helps our audiences get back to seeing music," said Kurin.

At Mercury Lounge in Tulsa, co-owner Bobby Dean Orcutt said his business has received thousands of dollars from the program.

"It helps us breathe a little bit easier and kind of focus our efforts on where we want it to be, which is the patron experience, the band experience, not figuring out how we're going to keep the lights on and keep everybody fed," explained Orcutt.

Orcutt said the program also helped the venue go from five days of live music a week to seven days of live music.

"It enabled us to you know, subsidize money we're already putting out of pocket, and instead of kind of sitting on that, we started doing more shows," said Orcutt.

Kurin said Play Tulsa Music launched in 2020, with $190,000 for 700 performances. In 2021, the program relaunched with $100,000 of private funding, supporting 600 performances.

"This is a unique program to Tulsa,” said Kurin. “In fact, we've had multiple cities outside of our state reach out and say, 'How did you make this happen? We would love to recreate this in our area.'"

Learn more about Play Tulsa Music at: http://playtulsamusic.com.

Official Play Tulsa Music LIVE fund Guidelines + Application can be found at: https://playtulsamusic.com/guidelines.