Crowdfunding the Right Way

In the past, money was a huge barrier for musicians, and one of the main reasons many were forced to tie themselves to a record label. Today, many musicians are finding their own ways to creatively fund their albums and tours, with the most popular option being crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a huge undertaking, but, if done correctly, you can come out of it with a whole lot more than just money. It also presents dedicated and creative artists a chance to connect with their fans in a whole new way.

Learn how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign with these 5 tips

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Five Essential Tips for a Successful Kickstarter Campaign

From no-name garage bands to established rockers like The Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer, crowdfunding on sites like Kickstarter—where artists of all stripes offer fan-friendly incentives to get their followers to essentially executive produce tours, albums, music videos, and so on—is becoming an increasingly effective model for bankrolling endeavors in lieu of ever-decreasing record label support.

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A Musicianʼs Mini-Guide to Crowdfunding - What Platform Is Right For You?

This article previously appeared on the Presskit.to Blog.

Written by Jem Bahaijoub

2012 was the year crowdfunding went mainstream. The success of Amanda Palmerʼs Kickstarter campaign threw the alternative fanfunding model into the limelight, and now most musicians are turning to their fans and friends for financial support pre-release. But what is the best crowdfunding platform for you? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each platform? Hereʼs a helpful chart outlining the key features of four of the top crowdfunding platforms out there.

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5 Kickstarter Killers Your Band Should Avoid Like the Plague

Great news!  According to Kickstarter, 54% of all music Kickstarter campaigns are successful.  The bad news is that 46% FAIL. How can you avoid these terrible odds?

Over at the Launch and Release blog we’ve interviewed over 60 bands who’ve launched Kickstarter campaigns to help us collect and analyze data that we’ll be releasing in the coming months.

I’ve also launched multiple pre-order campaigns prior to Kickstarter opening it’s doors and I’ve launched multiple successful Kickstarter campaigns in the last two years for my two bands.

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How to Create a Successful Kickstarter Campaign

For many years, I’ve held some doubts about Kickstarter and crowd sourcing in general. For some artists, I thought it was a great fit for the culture of the band. However, for my personal band, I had some more reservations. I thought it could make the band look desperate or be a huge embarrassment if we ended up being pitifully distant from meeting the goal. However, we had a serious of setbacks that required large, quick funding and decided to give it a chance. Our band was able to raise $14,511 of our $10,000 goal for a new bus in 20 days. Here are some general thoughts, tips, and lessons learned:

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Microfunding Is The Future of Labels! (...But Kickstarter Is The Wrong Model For Bands)

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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