Music On Kickstarter By The Numbers

While Amanda Palmer’s wildly successful Kickstarter campaign was certainly a strong example of the power of crowdfunding for a musician, one can’t help but wonder just how successful music projects are on Kickstarter across the board. To find out, we looked to Kickstarter’s raw data and metrics that include figures on success rates, dollars pledged, and trends of successfully and unsuccessfully funded projects. As it turns out, music is the most successful category on the platform.

As of this writing, music holds the highest ratio of projects-to-success with 7,432 successful campaigns holding a 54.18% success rate. In terms of dollar amounts, over 5,600 music projects received funding ranging from $1,000 – $9,999 (winning the category for that dollar range).

However, funding is “all-or-nothing in more ways than one,” as Kickstarter says. When it comes to unsuccessfully launched projects, music is in the #2 slot with 6,285 projects not successfully funded, with the majority of music projects receiving 1%-20% of dollars needed – leading that dollar category. It’s important to note, however, that while 13% of all Kickstarter projects finished have never received a single pledge, 82% of projects that raised more than 20% of their goal were successfully funded.

Overall figures for Kickstarter include 61,110 projects to date totaling 264 million “successful” dollars (pledges to successful projects that were collected) earning a 44.02% success rate. Their stats page is updated at least once a day and can be viewed here.

MORE: Lessons Learned From Three Successful Kickstarter Music Campaigns

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