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SALT LAKE CITY — If you’re making and recording music in Utah, the Salt Lake City Library wants to hear it — and pay you for it.
The library is starting a new collection of local tunes called HUM: Hear Utah Music. The program’s curators are calling for submissions now through Feb. 22. Anyone making original music in the state can submit songs made in the last five years for submission to the collection.
Music will be available for free streaming, and library cardholders will be able to download the songs via the HUM website later this summer.
“We’re really trying to support local music,” said curator Jason Rabb, a library employee. “We’re creating this space where we can have this collection that all of us, myself included, can go there and discover music from Utah.”
After the submission window closes, Rabb, along with fellow curators Alana Boscan, Stephen Cope, Alexander Ortega and Brad Wheeler, will decide what albums and EPs will be included in the collection.
Artists will get a $200 honorarium for albums that are selected and $100 for EPs. There will be a call for new submissions every six months so that the curators can keep the collection fresh, Rabb said.
The company that will maintain the HUM website, Rabble, also will help the Salt Lake library compile an archive of band posters from over the years, Rabb said.
Rabble has helped several other cities in the U.S. to compile a music collection, but Salt Lake City will be the first in the country to have a poster archive, Rabb said.
“It’s kind of a different perspective on local history from a music perspective with the band posters,” he said.
The collection website will officially launch on June 1 and 2, Rabb said. Two concerts will help kick off the website, one at Diabolical Records and another at Urban Lounge.
Rabb said he hopes the collection will help people connect to the music community.
“It’s been a big project and in the works for a while,” Rabb said. “It’s pretty exciting that it’s happening.”
For more information, visit hum.slcpl.org.
