Former PledgeMusic CEO Accused Of Financial Mismanagement

Last week record producer Ken Andrews published a Facebook post that included allegations of financial mismanagement by former PledgeMusic CEO Dominic Pandiscia.

“Pandiscia stole my band’s money…”

“In 2015 a company fully functioning and in the black, providing a backend payment service to bands who don’t want to deal with that aspect of selling their music,” wrote Andrews. “…Unfortunately, that level of success was not enough for Pledge and its new CEO, Dominic Pandiscia. They wanted more, a lot more. Which is why they began an aggressive investment campaign. This would not have been a problem except that Pandiscia thought it was a fine idea to go ahead and spend my band’s money to grow his company. Nowhere in Pledge’s terms of service agreement does it say that your money is going to be used to grow a company you have no vested interest in. And nowhere does it say that your money is subject to be stolen. Because that is in fact what Pandiscia has done here. Pandiscia stole my band’s money to benefit the company he was CEO of.”

Andrews says that his band was making their first album in 20 years and raised $75,000 using PledgeMusic which has never been paid to them. Artists and labels are owed as much a $10 million after the collapse of the music fan-funding platform earlier this year.

Andrews further alleged that Pandiscia – who left the crowdfunder in June 2018 and is a consultant for Primary Wave and it’s partner Gaither Music – got his new job because he made certain that Primary Wave artists were paid the money they were owed by PledgeMusic before its collapse.

This later allegation does not appear to match with Pandiscia’s exit from PledgeMusic unless he continued to have influence there.  But Andrews remains firm: “Pandiscia should be in jail right now, and yet, he is sitting at a desk at a prominent music company. How can this be? It can be because no one is saying anything. No one is willing to speak truth to power here.”

“The allegations made against me by Ken Andrews are patently untrue and fabricated.”

In response, Pandiscia told Variety: “The allegations made against me by Ken Andrews are patently untrue and fabricated. It is irresponsible for any publication to print such inflammatory rhetoric without fact-checking or providing opportunity for comment. Had they done so, it would have cleared up the errors and falsehoods. This leaves me no choice but to explore options for legal action for libel and slander.”

Undeterred, Andrews responded: “If the statements I made are all patently false, as Mr. Pandiscia claims, then why didn’t Mr. Pandiscia take the opportunity last night to actually ‘clear up the errors and falsehoods’ directly to the journalist he spoke to? Thousands of Pledge victims, both artists and customers, are all sitting here patiently waiting for a straight talk explanation of what happened.”

The original Facebook post: