Music Crowdfunding Danger! Be Good… But Not Too Good
Matt Voyno (@Voyno), co-author of The New Rockstar Philosophy book and blog is currently crowdfunding on Indiegogo. Here he writes about his motivations and experiences.
So get this. It's possible to be too good. Yes, TOO GOOD! Crazy I know, but if you are crowdfunding and looking for money, make sure you LOOK LIKE YOU NEED MONEY. People want to help those in NEED. Nobody wants to help a rich dude. Those jerks get all the breaks. So don't look rich. Look like you need money. Recently I learned this the hard way.
As you may know The New Rockstar Philosophy is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo helping cover the costs of our first physical (aka "real") book.
You see, we've partnered with Indie Ink, a real-life two person independent publisher, not some faceless major label publishing house. This means that we are running a lean operation. We're hungry and we all believe in The New Rockstarstar Philosophy. We've already put in a ton of blood, sweat and cash into this and we need more help to do it right. This is where our crowdfunding video comes in. You see I thought you should make a professional video. I thought that you should get a professional videographer. I thought you needed it to look immaculate and as perfect as possible. I thought all that, but I was wrong.
When we released our first pro video we were super happy with it. I still have no idea how I convinced my friend (and brilliant videographer) to donate his time to us. He edits from home and his 4 year old daughter has been repeating "New Rockstar Philosophy Book and Blog" for weeks because of how much time he spent on this 4 minute video:
New Rockstar Philosophy Crowdfunding Campaign
Obviously the video LOOKS like a million bucks! But to some people it looks we HAVE a million bucks.
At first I was shocked by that idea, but upon some reflection I can understand it. The thought of a viewer probably goes something like this: "Why should I give you money? Clearly you signed with a fancy publisher, they gave you money, paid for your photos and fancy video shoot!"
That could not be further from the truth. We NEED THIS MONEY. We've been giving away content for 5 years (that's a decade in internet time!). Our content was there but never obnoxiously pushed. This crowdfunding campaign is our push. It's a modest sum and we've got a ton of great rewards including our physical book that Jack Conte from Pomplamoose has said "Just makes sense. It's 5 years of industry wisdom wrapped up into a solid, quick read". But in that desire to present all this good stuff we may have missed the mark of what we were trying to convey.
Essentially, our gorgeous first video was too good for this type of crowdfunding campaign. Consider this lesson learned. Our new video is out now. It was filmed on an iPhone, held by a friend, edited by Hoover. Nothing million dollar about it. So remember to think about your audience and make sure to create a good video but… not too good:
New Rockstar Philosophy Crowdfunding Q&A
Jack not Jake
Why do you even need a publisher?
I’ve published books through CreateSpace on Amazon.
This is just an ad. Why is this here?
It is not an ad it’s about a real book that these independent authors are writing about the what it takes to be successful today in the music business. The best part is that they are putting what they’re writing about to the test by doing a crowdfunding for it’s release in the physical world. As for not needing a publisher or as others have suggested no distributor. Well! If you’re only going to release on Amazon and have no plan to do a book tour, have industry players talk about you or sell to the US Book or Music stores that still exist then carry on.