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The Plans for supplemental funding is underway for the. On Friday (Aug. 27), the Small Business Administration began sending out invitations for entities to apply for additional federal funding from the $16 billion allocated for music venues, promoters, talent agencies and more.

These supplemental grants will be available for anyone who received an initial grant and are able to show a 70% loss when comparing 2021’s first-quarter revenues to the same in 2019. Supplemental award applicants can choose to apply for any amount up to 50% of their original grant amount, with a $10 million cap of the initial and supplemental awards combined.

“The SBA has awarded approximately $9 billion in crucial relief to approximately 11,500 performing arts venues and other related businesses so they can continue to anchor our neighborhoods and define our communities. We know many of these businesses still need assistance to fully recover from the unanticipated expenses and debt caused by the pandemic,” SBA Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program director Matthew Stevens said in a release. “These supplemental grants will go to the hardest-hit Shuttered Venue Operators Grant awardees to ensure they can get back on their feet and get back to the business of driving our nation’s economy.”

The supplemental awards also allow SVOG recipients to extend the time to use their grant funds for expenses accrued through June 30, 2022 and lengthen their budget period to 18 months from the initial grant’s disbursement date.

If sufficient funding is not available for all eligible entities to receive a supplemental award, priority will be given to applicants who have illustrated the greatest revenue loss in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter in 2019. With $9 billion of the $16.2 billion for the grants awarded, roughly $7 billion remains for supplemental grants. If applicants are only allowed to receive 50% of their initial award, then as much as $2.5 billion could remain after supplemental grants are completed.

Applicants should check their program portal and follow instructions to accept or decline the supplemental grant. The SBA will be reviewing entities’ first quarter revenue for 2021 to decide on who receives funding. The SBA says those invited to apply for supplemental grants can expect awards to begin rolling out within two weeks.

Since the Shuttered Venue Operators Grants program was signed into law in December, independent venues, movie theaters and more live event businesses have struggled to bring in substantial revenue for the majority of 2021. Of the more than 17,600 applications submitted for the SVOG, just over 4,100 were declined. About 13% or just over 1,300 applications are still under review by the SBA.

For the first time in 15 months, live music is returning nationwide after the global coronavirus pandemic ravaged the industry. Billboard’s “My First Show Back” is a series dedicated to sharing stories from throughout the touring ecosystem about what’s happening now, what has been forever altered and what will never change.

In this installment, concert promoter Graham Williams discusses having to shut down his former company, Margin Walker Presents, due to the pandemic, and rebuilding as Resound Presents. Williams tells Billboard about resurrecting his business just before the Delta variant of COVID arrived to threaten concert schedules. 

Our first shows back weren’t normal ticketed shows. They were sponsored events. Texas Lottery does an annual series of free concerts and it was sponsored by them. It was rapper Wale, and he did Houston, Dallas and Austin. Two of them were 1,000-1,200 capacity rooms and the one in Austin was about 2,000. That same weekend we had a show in Austin with rapper Ramirez, and then about a week or two later we had a series of shows in San Antonio.

With the Wale shows, it was the last weekend of July. Things were just picking up, and then a week and a half, two weeks later, when we had our next round of shows, things got more intense with the COVID numbers. We had to pay more attention to things surrounding that.   

In May, the first shows I went to just check out — at the beginning it was weird, but by the end of the show it felt normal. It felt like every other show. At this point, I was assuming everyone was vaccinated and the Delta variant hadn’t really popped up yet. People weren’t wearing masks. Everyone was like, “We got the vaccine. Everything’s fixed.” People were just so anxious to get back to some form of normalcy, but since then I would say there’s a lot more masking.   

[The last time I promoted a show] was early March 2020. It’s a little different here, because in early March we don’t have a lot of shows because SXSW sort of rents out all the clubs. We worked with SXSW and some of the events that happened that week. Then SXSW, shockingly, was cancelled. Looking back it makes sense, but at the time we were all surprised.  

We kept Margin Walkers going through the summer, and we started talking about [shutting down permanently] when it was clear this wasn’t going to be a matter of days, weeks or months. So we announced [we were closing] in early December.  

We had always hoped that we would get back to some version of what we did before. We’re good at it. We’ve been doing it forever. Some folks, it’s in their DNA. We didn’t want to come back prematurely and wanted to wait until it was safe. We started talking and working on Resound in spring. I called the Margin Walkers staff. We talked to everybody who worked here. We knew we were going to scale down a little bit. Half [of the former staff] was excited to come back and couldn’t wait. The other half got new careers. Some of them still love music and the music business but had been wanting to do something different for a while. One guy got a job in high-end collectible trading cards. Someone went to work with some huge Twitch, YouTube sensation guy. Someone else got a job completely out of entertainment doing spreadsheets and project management and she loves it. People found these new roles.  

[Resound Presents] now has 75 shows on sale, and we have a bunch more we’re about to announce. We will have about 100 live shows in the next month or so. It feels just like it always did, except better and more organized. I think everybody is hoping that nothing weird happens. That’s where we are right now.  

It was weird. It felt good to be back at it, but the [COVID] numbers were just starting to creep up and there were a lot of unvaccinated folks starting to get sick. We were really pushing for masks, masks, masks. They weren’t mandated, but you could push it. None of the shows were at capacity wall-to-wall, but they were packed. Usually 5% to 10% of people don’t show up to shows, but it was a bit more [than that]. 

In early to mid-August is when people started saying, “Let’s start enforcing something. Let’s say you either have to have the vaccination or proof of the negative test to come in.” That’s something artists have been pushing for, and I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but promoters and clubs were all set for it as well.   

Any shows we have done with the new requirements, we’ve seen a handful of refund requests. We offer a small 48-hour window to request a refund. I want to say that for a 1,000-person show, about 30 people got refunded and another one was about 10 people. And more people scooped up those tickets. We saw an uptick in sales that blew past the refunds. There were more people interested in going because of the new rules.

As told to Taylor Mims.

As we reach the end of the summer, it’s time to start prepping for the fall with some new tracks from your favorite queer artists. Billboard Pride is here to help with First Out, our weekly roundup of some of the best new music releases from LGBTQ artists.

From Kim Petras’ return to dance-pop, to Halsey’s stunningly serious new album, check out just a few of our favorite releases from this week below:

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Kim Petras, “Future Starts Now”

The princess of pop has finally returned! After a brief hiatus, Petras officially burst back onto the scene with “Future Starts Now,” the first single off of her hotly anticipated debut album, and her first single since officially signing to Republic Records. The ’80s Euro-dance track sees Petras cruising in a familiar lane, as pounding beats and catchy synths accompany her slick vocals as she croons about not looking back, and plowing forward into her new, pop-fueled era. “Ain’t nobody gonna stop me/ Don’t you let the music stop now,” she sings on the track. “You’re more than just anybody/ Don’t give up, the future starts now.”

Halsey, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

To anyone who ever doubted the depth of talent and artistry that Halsey wields at any given moment, may we introduce you to If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. The singer’s fourth album, appropriately produced by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, goes far beyond what some expected — namely, her long-awaited rock album. Instead, the constantly changing, genre-bent project sees them taking on punk (“You Asked For This”), hip-hop (“Lillith”), and straight-up pop (“Girl With a Gun”), all while narrating a complex tale of pregnancy, birth and motherhood. If I Can’t Have Love is the kind of album that will keep you thinking for hours after listening to it, and it’s for that reason that you should absolutely press play now.

Rina Sawayama, “Enter Sandman”

Rina Sawayama has made a name for herself as a genre-bender. So it’s no surprise that when she was tapped to tackle Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” for their 30th anniversary covers album, she put her own spin on the classic. Throughout her cover, Sawayama leans into the guitar-heavy shredding of the original, while doubling down on her own pop sensibilities — adding in smashing drum machines, chill-inducing vocal distortions, and the kinds of glitchy, hard-to-pin down production flourishes that made her debut album such a smashing success. Head off to Never Never Land with this fabulous cover, courtesy of Rina Sawayama.

Wrabel, “London”

For the last few of his releases, singer-songwriter Wrabel has leaned into depicting happier loving relationships. But with “London,” he’s back in his feelings with an emotionally devastating and viscerally gorgeous new song. Accompanied by a guitar and some light drums, the teary-eyed new song sees Wrabel reflecting on missed opportunities in a relationship that has long-since ended. “Sometimes when it’s cold in California/ I think back to that winter with you,” he sings. “‘Cause living in Los Angeles the skies are always blue/ Sometimes I miss London.”

A Great Big World, Particles

It’s been six years since A Great Big World shared their last album with the world, and if the contents of their third studio album are anything to go by, then it’s clear that the duo has grown in that time. Throughout Particles, Ian Axel and Chad King wax poetic on everything from becoming parents (“Glowing”), to OCD (“Save Me From Myself”), to reflections of sexuality (“Boys In the Street”) and finding the one that you want to be with (“The One”). It’s a beautiful album filled with excellently-written songs and the kind of sentimentality that will have you reaching for the tissues.