Wednesday, October 29, 2014

A New Kind of Crowd Funding


A New Kind of Crowd Funding

Over the past couple of years, crowd-funding has been pretty well established as one of the best platforms for a musician to advance their career. The only drawback is that it doesn’t get musicians “all the way there”. While funding an album is arguably the steepest part of the climb, it is less than half of the battle. The next challenge is of course the recording process, which comes with the pressure of staying within budget. Then comes the time consuming task of marketing the album, promoting it through a tour and affording all related expenses, the possible need to hire a PR rep, and last but not least, the album has to sell. Even if everything goes according to plan, there is no guarantee that the artist will being able to support themselves well enough to quit their jobs, focus on their music and continue to grow their audience.

And by the way, this problem does not just apply to musicians, but just about any creative-type who seeks to turn their passion/talent into a career. You can think about it this way; if a writer receives an advance or an inventor receives a grant, they are not getting funds to print their manuscript or put their invention into production. The funds are allocated so that they can support themselves while they focus on completing their work.

A new type of crowd-funding platform called Rocket Fuel has emerged and addresses this problem precisely. The money donated does not (necessarily) go to a specific project but aims to support the artist has they hone and promote their craft. Donors who find an artist they truly believe in are encouraged to commit to monthly donations, bringing the artist closer to supporting themselves and devote as much time to their music as possible. An added benefit of gaining supporters through Rocket Fuel is that it creates a more intimate relationship between an artist and their fans, which brings with it assurances that they will be at all your shows, buy merch (although you probably want to offer some as a ‘thank you’), and best of all tell their friends about the awesome band that they are essentially underwriting.

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