Artist Growth is a management app that’s out to change how musicians and their teams handle their day-to-day business on the road. In its year-and-a-half active lifespan, it’s streamlined schedules, finances, and on-the-road inventory into one all-purpose program – so well, that it was one of nine game-changing apps highlighted in the July 6 “New D.I.Y.” Billboard cover story, where it even snagged a spot on said cover. Now founder/CEO Matt Urmy is expanding its reaches so that clients have access to something that’s long eluded many musicians: affordable health insurance.
Urmy remembers being a 20-something indie artist without a day job, and in turn, without health insurance. “As soon as I became a father, it became a necessity for me to have it,” Urmy says. Urmy, now 35, started Artist Direct when he was struggling to balance his musical endeavors alongside his day job at Nashville’s cancer research department at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute. He didn’t forget the plight of uninsured musicians, as devised a plan for subscribers to his new service to obtain health insurance at a discounted rate.
The Nashville-based Sound Healthcare got a deal with the Musicians Union to represent them in the market. Through strength in numbers, the deal created enough buying power to negotiate rates with big providers like BlueCross and United.
“I got us in under the wire by saying that the people using our software are professional artists or are on the track to becoming professional artists,” Urmy says. “And so after several weeks of discussing it, they agreed to let Artist Growth users be included in that alliance network. So now an Artist Growth artist can call Sound Healthcare or apply for healthcare through our application directly with Sound Healthcare and then they reach right out to them and design a personalized plan for them. And then it goes to market on their behalf and negotiates the rates and brings them back their health care package.”
Basic membership rates with Artist Growth – geared towards up-and-coming independent artists – are available at $10 per month. Expanded plans, for larger, established artists, are priced upon request. Those established artists include Alicia Keys, Ke$ha, Kings of Leon, and Dave Matthews Band. The app is compatible with Android, iPad, and iPhone.
In other new developments, Artist Growth is creating an industry-spanning advisory board to guide it into the future. Urmy expects to introduce personnel later this month, though he told Billboard he expects to include representatives from management, labels, booking, and even artists included.
And in addition to the deal with Sound Healthcare, Urmy could have even more surprises in store from Artist Growth subscribers:
“I’ve been working hard to get another couple really big deals done so it’ll be really significant benefits for artists. I’m hoping to be able to announce what some of those are later this month as well.”
Like Urmy, most of the employees at Artist Growth have been touring musicians at some time in their lives. They know the world of venture capital bombards musicians with technological reinventions, forcing them to readapt time and time again. “We ask ourselves, does what we’re building help artists every day? … What we’re doing is to be a unifying tool in an industry that’s been very disrupted.”
