Looking Ahead
“Five years from now Kickstarter will hopefully be the same as it is now,” Strickler predicts. But, as with any online organism, crowdfunding may have to evolve in order to survive.
Take as a micro-example the rewards/perks/bonuses offered by the growing pool of artists competing for the attention of fans and the media. Whereas a signed vinyl or a T-shirt was once enough to persuade someone to contribute to a project, and a project in and of itself was enough to warrant blog coverage, artists have now upped the ante considerably.
As I Lay Dying frontman Tim Lambesis––yes, the guy recently arrested for allegedly soliciting someone to kill his wife––gave donors to his Austrian Death Machine side project the chance to punch him in the stomach. Solo rocker Jesse Malin offered to play a softball game with contributors, while singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur even put his tour van on the auction block.
Malin’s and Arthur’s campaigns were featured on PledgeMusic, a mutated version of crowdfunding that could provide clues on how the practice could evolve. As opposed to Kickstarter and Indiegogo, PledgeMusic campaigns don’t include financial targets or even timetables. Instead, supports fund a project from its inception through its fruition––and beyond
“If you run a crowdfunding campaign for 30 days, what happens on day 31?” company founder Benji Rogers asked. “That’s where the campaign really begins.”
According to Rogers, a musician gets 30 percent of their income after a crowdfunding campaign, since it can take a while to get fans involved. Accordingly, the average campaign on PledgeMusic––which charges a 15 percent commission that includes all other fees––lasts for four or five months instead of one, with the intention of deepening the level of engagement with fans.
Rogers calls PledgeMusic a “direct-to-fan” site that guarantees fans get their money back if they don’t get the creative product for which they pledged.
The best-known musician to launch a campaign on the site is Mike Doughty, who took the fan-solicitation concept to another level by allowing “pledgers” to pick among three versions of the same song, each performed in a different key. He then committed to sending each individual song to pledgers on a signed and numbered digital recorder and, for roughly $35,000, record them a personal message.
Such innovation might prove that, whatever the future holds for crowdfunding, music fans can always count on the artists to come through. They existed before there was a music industry, and survived its collapse, and will undoubtedly outlast any new technologies and paradigms.
As P-Funk legend George Clinton said when asked to comment on his successful Indiegogo campaign to upgrade his music studio and obtain the rights to some of his archival material:
“It’s time for people to start getting their music back. WE WILL WIN!”
