fund your own revolution
An unsigned band has got its fans to invest their savings in their first album. A film company did something similar a few months ago preselling 10,000 DVD's to fans in order to fund their next feature film - but can't remember who they are. I really like examples of people thinking their way out of generally accepted ways of doing things.
2 comments:
er hummm...I'm all for people finding new ways to fund their dreams but I do find something a bit fishy in the band story. Not that they formed their own label - this isn't a new phenomenon these days, it takes the cut that a label would take out from any sales profits and puts it in the pockets of the musicians and fair enough, I'm all for maximising profits. But the amounts that the fans have invested seem to be a bit extreme even if they went into this with their eyes open and in the full knowledge that they might lose it all. It just seems to me that the way that the band view this exercise seems to be a bit greedy. According to the article the band had already been offered "...a string of record deals two-and-a-half years ago" which fell through because the "...financial clout and creative control the band wanted were missing" Had I been a fan I would have wanted to know exactly what the band had turned down in past and why. I'd also want to know exactly how much better than a good indie deal the band got. After all, there's no harm in engaging in a mutually beneficial business deal, and while I might be quite happy to help fund a demo or a first album, I'd be less than thrilled to discover that my hard earned cash had been paying for peoples lifestyles as well. While I'm certainly not suggesting that we should have a return to the days of the naive musicians - it comes to something else when in order to be a fan you need to have a good lawyer too!
Interesting points I suppose it comes down to what people are comfortable with funding. Eg recording costs but not rent?
Another article I saw yesterday but can't remember if it was in the Guardian or the Independent said that music had been identified as a major export revenue earner and embassies abroad were going to be encouraged to support bands breaking into the US market in particular.
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