D.I.Y.

Kickstarter Added $13 Million To New Music Economy In Just 2 Years

image from www.google.com Kickstarter turned two years old today and shared some stats that show just how important their fan funding platform has been to d.i.y.  music and the new music economy. Overall $53,107,672 has been pledged and $40 million collected to fund 7496 successful Kickstarter projects. Of that, $13,094,547 went to fund music related projects.

Music was Kickstarter's second most funded category after film with $19,717,790 in funding. Ten of the 13 categories have seen more than $1 million in pledges and overall funding is growing rapidly.

About 13% or 79,658 of Kickstarter's 591,773 backers pledged to support more than one project on the site within the last two years. "This is a key number for us. It’s Kickstarter’s supply side," the company wrote along with the stats. "They’re people who don’t just back a friend’s project, they find something else to support. And sometimes fifty other things to support."

And Kickstarter is not alone in the fan funding space. Slicethepie, Sellaband and others have carved out a niche in a category that barely existed just two years ago.

Bruce Houghton on 04/29/2011 in D.I.Y. | Permalink | Comments (7)
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7 Comments

  1. I’ve got a campaign going on Kickstarter right now and I can tell you it’s going exactly how I thought it would. Unless you already have a pretty supportive collection of friends & family or dedicated fan base you won’t be meeting your goal. If you don’t have this then you need to have some kind of outlet to connect with people daily to market your campaign. Its weird because if this is the case then why use Kickstarter when you could just do it yourself on your own website not having to fork over 5% and you can set your own time limit?
    Free album download at http://www.facebook.com/chancius

  2. Chancius, I see what you’re saying but I think one of the bigger reasons to use a service like Kickstarter, especially once the service has some name recognition and history, is that they return the money if the project doesn’t get started.
    That means the folks that don’t know you, beyond friends and family, don’t have to develop any trust beyond liking the music. The platform lends a level of legitimacy that is key to getting people to put up money.
    You say you’re working on a Kickstarter campaign but you link out here to your website and Facebook page, neither of which really leads people into your Kickstarter campaign. There is a little text note on the left column of your FB page but it’s not very noticeable and the link isn’t clickable.
    I don’t know what you’ve done in the past but just depending on the platform to promote seems unlikely to lead to success. Of course, some platforms develop followings and you get that added boost but it’s your campaign and you have to promote it all out to make it work.
    And not everything works. People talk about this stuff as if following a list of guidelines will lead to success but for most people it doesn’t. Hate to sound cheesy but you’ve got to create a perfect storm and that’s hard to do, especially as a one man army.

  5. Further proof that DIY Music / Crowd-funding is becoming the new music economy. More investment into developing music tech start ups (such as Kickstarter), surely, is required to help grow this exciting sector.. as well as what Clyde says services, like Kickstarter, gain stronger name recognition

  7. Exactly. Used it. Failed. It’s great if you already have a fanbase. Though one in particular barely made their goal.

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