Show Me the Money!

As Aloe Blacc says:

❝ I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need ! ❞

This refrain could well be the unofficial international anthem for musicians around the world. Raising the capital to tour and record has always been a Sisyphean task for aspiring musos. Despite the glamorous mythology surrounding the music industry, it's not all sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

Quite the opposite, in fact. 

It takes a lot of metaphorical blood, sweat and tears to succeed. Raw talent alone is rarely enough to pave a golden path towards a lucrative, or even sustainable career. In this scene from Jean-Michel Basquiat's cult film Downtown 81, the narrative of indie artist Walter Steding epitomises the hard slog of the aspiring musician:

Since the birth of pop music in the 1960s, success in the music biz has been contingent upon:

1.   A & R whims and gimmicks

2.   Image creation

3.   Marketing

4.   and THEN, maybe, Talent

BUT... in the last 10 years, the digital revolution has changed the game. 

Platforms like Myspace, YouTube, Soundcloud and Beatport have closed the gap between musicians/DJs/producers and their audience. Big wig music biz middlemen are losing their stranglehold over artists... and having to find new day jobs!

It's an exciting time to be an independent artist. The technology now exists and is affordable enough to turn young hopefuls from bedroom bangers into self-made multi-media superstars.

One particularly important development for tomorrow's indie legends is the birth and BOOM of crowd-funding. In the past, musos had to beg, borrow and steal to raise the bucks for their creative projects. NOW, if they are digital media savvy, they can use sites like Rockethub, Kickstarter, Pozible and Sponsume to fund their albums, tours, etc.

There are plenty of crowd funding projects that don't raise the desired amount to finance their projects. For the feature, I'm going to take a closer look at some unsuccessful projects and analyse where they went wrong. I'm also going to analyse the now-legendary crowd funding success story of indie artist Amanda Palmer - to see where she went right!

 

Stay tuned for interviews with:

* New York based DJ, MC, producer, Social Media Afficionado and Renaissance Man, Melo-X

* Dutch DJ, producer and Rejected music label owner Edwin Oosterwal

* Founder of Australian crowd-funding site Pozible, Rick Chen

* Musicologist, DJ, Promoter, Educator, Simon Caldwell

* Artist Manager & Founder of the Hip-Hop Loves Foundation, Rene-John Sandy

And remember...