Crowdfunding developments

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September 23, 2015

The arts have seen a rapid growth of funding possibilities among the like-minded, the so-called sharing community. Support is exchanged directly between those creating the art, and those appreciating it, a logical concept if ever there was one.

Crowdfunding’s been around for a while, and we have contributed to several projects via Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, etc. I’ve also been recently intrigued by Patreon, which takes crowd funding beyond one-off projects, and facilitates monthly patronage of artists in exchange for content. Your fans can pledge you a certain amount, every time you do something – a video, a recording, etc. Suppose you have 50 fans who all say they’ll pay you 2$ for your next video: voilà, you get 100$, once you’ve done it and posted it on Patreon. Pie in the sky? Doesn’t seem to be: in 2013, Patreon’s most popular artists grossed over 100,000$ a year from the platform, an awful lot more than you’ll ever get from YouTube, iTunes or Spotify.

Apart from the obvious financial interest for artists, the system is even more direct than traditional crowd funding. It creates  It also builds up an ongoing relationship with the artist’s work, and rewards those who do a lot. At the moment we’re all still lucky he puts them up on YouTube, but I’d totally pledge in order to get a steady stream of recordings from e.g. Sylvain Blassel delivered straight to my mailbox.

Sylvain Blassel performs the Handel concerto on an Atlantide Prestige with the Zagreb Soloists. Once you’ve heard this, you wonder how doing it another way could ever have been discussed for hours, days and years. 

Find out more here: www.patreon.com