By now we’ve all at least heard about Kickstarter. Many of us have helped to fund projects. I’ve supported 5 or 6 myself. The best I can discern is that Kickstarter projects follow one of thee models. The explanations are a bit long, but I hope to tie this back into music and into why I believe the Kickstarter models are mostly not the correct models for funding recordings, but are great models for other types of projects.
Additionally, if I ran Kickstarter, I’d disallow projects that did not meet a stricter set of guidelines because I believe that many projects that are on the site actually damage the Kickstarter brand and the entire concept of microfunding. I end this post with a proposal for a new fan-investment label model that I believe is viable, won’t burn out fan interest in investment, and inherently creates a dedicated “street-team” to help bands promote their work. Let’s start with my taxonomic breakdown of Kickstarter models:
Model 1 - Donation / Support
These projects are designed to produce art, ideas, operations, movements, or objects that supporters want the world to have. These notions (I’ve decided to use the term “notion” to describe everything in this category) are not really owned by any of the supporters and the supporters’ only reward is that they get to know in their warm, fuzzy hearts, that they helped make an otherwise impossible notion come into being.
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