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Fan-funded music is
crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...
for
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
. Often, fan-funded music occurs in conjunction with direct-to-fan marketing. Fans of music have the option to donate and collectively raise money with the goal of jump-starting the career of a given musical artist. The fan-funding of music occurs primarily through web-based services using a
business model for crowdfunding. Fans are typically given rewards based on their monetary contributions.
Notable platforms
Additional information
ArtistShare
ArtistShare is the internet's first commercial crowdfunding website.Crowd-Funding 101: What Every Musician Needs for a Successful Campaign It also operates as a record label and business model for artists which enables them to fund their projec ...
ArtistShare is documented as being the first fan-funded website for music. The service lets musicians fund their projects utilizing a "fan-funding" model. In exchange for funding on a particular project, contributors receive various benefits. ArtistShare emphasizes on their website that for each project, the artist is in no way required to relinquish ownership of copyright, as this model is not a
work made for hire.
Indiegogo
Indiegogo is a
crowd funding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...
portal that allows users to create a page for their funding campaign, set up an account with
PayPal
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...
, make a list of "perks" for different levels of donation, then create a
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
-based publicity effort. Users publicize the projects themselves through
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
,
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and similar platforms. The site takes a 4% fee for successful campaigns. For campaigns that fail to raise their target amount, users have the option of either refunding all money to their contributors at no charge or keeping all money raised minus a 9% fee. Unlike similar sites such as
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...
, Indiegogo disburses the funds immediately, when the contributions are collected through the user's PayPal accounts. Indiegogo also offers direct credit card payment acceptance through their own portal. Those funds are disbursed up to two weeks after the conclusion of a campaign.
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...
Often described as the most successful and well-known
crowd funding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...
platform, Kickstarter has been featured on
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'',
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
and ''
Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...
''. Kickstarter is a crowd funding website that has successfully funded everything from films, games, and music to art, design, and technology. Project creators choose a deadline and a minimum goal of funds to raise. If the goal is not reached by the deadline, no funds are collected. The platform is open to backers from anywhere in the world and to creators from the US or the UK. Kickstarter takes a 5% fee and
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
takes an additional 3%.
PledgeMusic
PledgeMusic was an online direct-to-fan music platform, launched in August 2009. It was started to facilitate musicians looking to pre-sell, market, and distribute projects; such as recordings and concerts. It bore similarities to other artist p ...
PledgeMusic was an international
crowd funding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...
platform geared specifically toward musicians. Users (pledgers) receive exclusive content in exchange for their contributions to artists fundraising campaigns. PledgeMusic does not retain any ownership or rights to any music created through the platform. Funding transactions occur only after a goal is successfully met. The site is staffed by people in the music industry and maintains partnerships with major players in the digital and physical music spheres allowing for numerous options to help record, produce, manufacture, market, and distribute artist's music, merchandise, and tickets. The site charges a 15% fee. PledgeMusic operates on two types of artist campaigns,
direct-to-fan and pre-order campaigns. In a pre-order campaign, fans are charged immediately upon pledging. This type of campaign is designed for labels and artists who have already completed a recording, and are looking for a strategic way to pre-sell and market it.
RocketHub
RocketHub was an online crowdfunding platform launched in 2010, its first use was September 1, 2009. Based in New York City, its users included musicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, game developers, philanthropists, filmmakers, photographers,Hai ...
RocketHub is an established
crowd funding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...
platform open to anyone including musicians. Project holders on RocketHub have the option to keep raised proceeds even if the fundraising pledge was not successful. RocketHub is a completely open platform, meaning that anyone can create a fan-funding campaign and there is no screening process before the project goes live. The site takes an 8% commission off successful projects.
Sellaband
Sellaband was a music website that allowed artists to raise the money from their fans and the SellaBand community in order to record a professional album. Sellaband used the mechanisms of crowdfunding and was to be seen as a Direct-to-Fan/fan-fu ...
Sellaband was a
crowd funding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...
platform that allowed registered artists to use a
direct-to-fan approach to finance albums or concerts. Artists will pledge an amount, the minimum funding target being
€
The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...
3000, and the maximum funding target, €250,000. Artists may also choose if they want to integrate a
revenue sharing
Revenue sharing is the distribution of revenue, the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services among the stakeholders or contributors. It should not be confused with profit shares, in which scheme only the profit is share ...
option into their funding. The minimum incentive is a download.
Corite
Corite collects five percent of the funding fee provided to an artist, and then another five percent of the royalties that are paid by streaming services. The company has raised $6.9m from investors.
Cases of note
Marillion
The British rock band
Marillion are considered to be one of the first artists to have truly harnessed the power of the
internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
as a means of music distribution and direct contact with fans, which began with setting up a website in 1996 and raising $60,000 to help finance a 1997 North American tour.
They have also been described by ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' music journalist
Alexis Petridis as "the undisputed pioneers" of the fan-funded music model,
beginning with the distribution of their 2001 release ''
Anoraknophobia
''Anoraknophobia'' is the 12th studio album, by the British rock band Marillion, released in 2001. It is regarded as the first instance of a music recording completely financed by fans in a then-unique fundraising campaign, 12,674 copies were p ...
''. Amidst a dissolving relationship with their record label and management team, the band calculated that they would need 5,000 fans to order the album to finance the project. However, they needed the money up-front, before the record was released. They turned to their mailing list and asked fans to pre-order the album in what was later described by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
as "a unique funding campaign".