BitTorrent Quietly and Abruptly Stops Giving Out Cash Grants to Artists
In August, BitTorrent announced the Discovery Fund, a grant program for marketing and promotional funding for artists. “Over the next year, BitTorrent aims to partner with 25 creators by providing cash grants and global promotional support to build impactful releases and discover new fans,” the company said in a blog post. “This open, international initiative has a rolling call (so you can apply when your project is ready) and provides $2,500- $100,000 in marketing and distribution funding to use at your discretion.” Now, without fanfare, BitTorrent has stopped accepting Discovery Fund grant applications, the company confirmed to Pitchfork.
“The program is still happening. However, we have made all of the commitments we planned to make for the Discovery Fund,” said Christian Averill, vice president of marketing at BitTorrent, in an email response to questions from Pitchfork. “While a good number of projects from the program have already been published, or are still in development and will be published soon, no additional projects will be funded as of now.”
As recently as October 3, BitTorrent tweeted a call for applications. In recent days, however, BitTorrent’s Discovery Fund URL quietly began redirecting to another page on BitTorrent’s site. The company had said applicants would receive a response within eight weeks, but users on Twitter and Facebook have complained about not getting their answers by that deadline.
Two readers, Bobby Aherne of Ireland’s No Monster Club and Dylan Von Wagner of New York’s Imaginary People, each separately told Pitchfork they received the following email reply to their applications:
Hi,
Sorry , Discovery fund has been scrapped out.
We are No more doing Discovery fund.Thanks and Regards,
BitTorrent Inc
Averill, the BitTorrent marketing executive, suggested the message had been part of an effort to inform applicants during a time when he was out of the office.
“We continue to receive a lot of queries and applications for the program and typically we respond to each individually,” Averill told Pitchfork. “During my absence there was an effort made to inform recent applicants of this status and it seems some version of that was shared with you. We’re making an effort right now to be sure that all who have applied are updated as to their application status directly.”
Despite the abrupt halt to the Discovery Fund, the program may still end up partnering with 25 artists as originally announced. Averill told Pitchfork that “between what has already been released and works in progress to be published at a future date, we should hit that [25] mark.”
Straith Schreder, BitTorrent’s vice president of creative initiatives and the executive who gave interviews about the Discovery Fund when the program was announced, is no longer with the company.
“Our goal with the rolling [acceptance period] was also rolling award and release (releasing a Discovery Fund project approximately every 30 days),“ Schreder told Pitchfork in reply to a LinkedIn message. “Since launching the fund in August, we’ve achieved that cadence, and, since my departure, awarded projects have been scheduled through the end of the year and into early 2017. As far as I know, the money has and is being handed out as planned. Sounds like there have been some kinks in notification and process since handing it off, which is a bummer to hear.”
Missy Laney, who as BitTorrent’s director of creative initiatives authored a blog post announcing the Discovery Fund, is also no longer with the company, according to her LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. Laney wasn’t immediately available for comment.
BitTorrent, the tech company known for developing the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol that shares its name, had an eventful 2016. In June, the company launched BitTorrent Now, a streaming service (BitTorrent Now was billed as a relaunch of the BitTorrent Bundle program, which was last updated in 2014 to coincide with the BitTorrent-exclusive release of Thom Yorke’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes). In July, at the Republican National Convention, BitTorrent introduced BitTorrent News, a live-streaming video news network.
In October came a report that BitTorrent had fired its two co-CEOs and was shutting down BitTorrent Now. At the time, Averill told Pitchfork the company “remains focused on the media space and there have been no changes to our platforms.” He confirmed the departure of co-CEO Robert Delamar while adding that co-CEO Jeremy Johnson was “still with the company.” Back then, Averill declined to comment further.
“We had some leadership changes in October,” Averill told Pitchfork this week. “Dipak Joshi [BitTorrent’s chief financial officer] is interim CEO right now and there’s lots of planning for what 2017 will look like, which is typical for this time of year. The Now/Bundle platform remains unchanged and there are works going up every week.”
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