Crowdfunding: Connecting Creators and Patrons

If you remember the group songbook Rise Up Singing, check out the sequel Rise Again.

These crowdfunded music projects caught my attention:

Karla Adolphe Solo Album-Graceland & Graveyards
An album devoted to the process and journey of grief.
$6,320 raised of $7,500 goal, 29 days left

Konteh Kunda School of Music
Help us build a music school that will preserve culture, empower musicians, and improve lives in Gambia, West Africa.
$5,365 raised of $10,000 goal, 28 days left

StormMiguel Florez
Transsexual Zombie Music Video by a real life transsexual!
$1,970 raised of $6,000 goal, 27 days left

HexenFest
Festival of magick-based music and dance
$1,155 raised of $3,000 goal, 5 days left

The Mechanisms - 'Once Upon A Time In Space'
A steampunk cabaret space-folk band looking to record and produce our first album
$1,177 of $1,500 goal, 90 days left

My friend Mishie tipped me to this fascinating project. There's a blog post, "Music for the New Year," and a Kickstarter project page, "Run On Sentence CSM."  There are videos of a different songs so that you can get an idea of what the music is like.

The CSM stands for Community Supported Music, inspired by Community Supported Agriculture. A $10 basic membership gets you a new, previously unreleased song delivered to your email each month -- cheaper than most albums. Higher donation levels get extra goodies.  Currently the project is at $2,073 pledged of its $2,500 goal, with 17 days left. It seems likely to make its goal, so we should get an example of this crowdfunding model in action. That would be both awesome and useful.

I'm deeply intrigued by this adaptation of the CSA model to creative endeavors.  In this version, it's using online access to attract a wide audience, which is fine; that has great potential for other crowdfunders who have an established audience and might like to experiment with this kind of share structure.  However, I suspect that it could also be done locally -- people in a given town supporting local bands, maybe even artists or poets or other creative folks.  

What would it be like if you could get a copy of the live recording from each local performance, or a discount on a performance at your place once a year, backstage passes, maybe a meet-the-musician party?  What would it be like if you could get copies of all the poems written about your town, its people and businesses, and the chance to have a custom poem written once a year, and see your poet livewriting at the county fair, and go to a poetry reading followed by a discussion in your local bookstore?  What would it be like if you could get screensaver images of a local artist's paintings of your town and neighbors, a discount on portraits, a chance to win a free original, invitations to an artist jam in a nearby park?  I think this has lots of opportunity to get people involved in local activities and facetime interactions between creative folks and audiences.