Photo by Marc Pagani.

Website Developing New Way to Support New Orleans Artists

9.52 million tourists came through New Orleans in 2014, bringing $6.8 billion in revenue to the city. Unfortunately, most of the people that keep this city’s culture alive–its musicians–didn’t reap benefits commensurate with their contributions.

A group of software engineers are developing a website that they hope will change that. The online platform–dubbed Culturalyst–is building a directory of local artists that fans of New Orleans culture can use to fund their favorite musicians.

The platform is pretty simple. Fans select an artist and become a patron for as little as $1 per month, depending on the person. In exchange for their funding, fans receive exclusive content from the artist and get to help contribute to the local culture. It’s kind of like a tip jar in that it removes many of the middlemen between fans and the musicians they enjoy.

“This city is special because of its people and and the stuff they so authentically create,” says Culturalyst Team Leader Sam Bowler. “We want to make it easy for anyone to catalyze culture so we’re building a directory of our city’s creative population plus a way to directly support them. Our vision is that everyone in New Orleans helps support our biggest social and economic asset by supporting the people who create it.”

The project is currently in the development stage, with a beta version set to be tested later this month.

If Culturalyst sounds like something you would like to see become a reality, you can help the developers out by voting for the project in NOLA.com/The Idea Village’s Big Idea competition. Voting closes on Monday, March 7, with the Top 10 companies moving on to the final round, where a $25,000 prize package will be awarded.

Culturalyst is currently in 11th place, so they could use a boost from anyone who thinks their project is worthwhile. As of now, most of the developers are working on the project as a side-gig, so the exra cash would go a long way toward getting the platform out to the public as soon as possible.