Getting (Kick)Started
While Marillion appears to be the first band to raise money for a music project through an online fan campaign, the founders of Kickstarter––which touts itself as the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects––say they came up with the concept independently of the UK prog band.
“I’m not sure if anyone can claim the idea,” Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler contends. “Everything about Kickstarter was our creation and came from us.”
Strickler says co-founder Perry Chen, an artist, devised the concept on his own in 2001 or 2002 when he wanted to stage a concert in New Orleans but didn’t have the money to do so. Chen wondered if people would agree to pay for their tickets via credit card only if the concert actually came to fruition, according to Strickler.
In 2005, Chen shared the idea with Strickler, a journalist, and Charles Adler, a designer. Four years later, they launched Kickstarter, through which an artist establishes a project and its financial goal, determines the length of the fundraising campaign and formulates a series of reward––such as a limited-edition album or a hoodie––to coax potential contributors.
Notably, Kickstarter doesn’t feature the word “crowdfunding”––which Strickler calls only “a mechanism”––anywhere on its site. Instead, the site encourages users to “pledge to” or “back” a “project.”
“No one is funding a project because they want to fund something,” he says. “It’s because they want to be part of a project.”
Similar to Chen’s original concept for the New Orleans concert, a Kickstarter project must reach its funding goal within a designated timeframe, or supporters won’t be charged for the money they commit. The strategy is a way of protecting the project supporters as well as ensuring that the project is not ill-funded, according to the website.
Kickstarter collects a five percent fee from the funding total for a project, if it is successfully funded. Additional payment processing fees run between three to five percent.
To date, Kickstarter has hosted 11,000 successfully funded projects, according to Strickler. He said that only 20 percent of the website’s 40,000 total number of creative projects have been related to music, as Kickstarter also hosts projects related to games, theater, comics, fashion and food (charity projects, however, are not allowed).
Strickler notes, however, that music projects have had some of the strongest success rates on the site, with 54 percent of music projects reaching their funding goals. He attributes the site’s success to its aesthetically appealing website, easy-to-use functionality and track record of success, chiefly represented by singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer raising a record-breaking $1,200,000 in May 2012. (See MC’s July 2012 cover story.)
“Since we’ve launched,” Strickler says, “there are hundreds of sites that have copied what we’ve done.”
