#gigfunder

Know what's popular? Kickstarter. Know what's really popular? Creating your own Kickstarter knock-off. The newest is GigFunder, an artist touring platform that allows musicians to raise money so that they can schedule gigs outside of their hometown. The site launched Monday and has already helped get San Francisco pop act onelinedrawing 34 percent of the way to Chicago, with nine other bands gassed up and ready to get out on the road. GigFunder's commitment to funding one type of creative project is not unique, however. Kickstarter’s approach to funding projects is growing more and more anything-goes with every Pebble watch and iPhone Elevation Dock campaign put up on the site. So it’s important to point out that there are a number of sites which allow backers to focus their attention on the types of projects they truly care about. Each helps to avoid the nasty confusion that surrounds, say, a gamer stumbling upon a filmmaker's campaign. Here are five Kickstarter alternatives putting in work to help those niche projects that need a centered set of eyes. GigFunder

Launched: May 8, 2012 Purpose: GigFunder helps bands raise money to go on tour and allows fans to launch campaigns to bring bands to their town. Value: "It reduces the risk for everyone," site founder Matt Pearson wrote on GigFunder's FAQ page. "If you need $4,000 to get from Chicago to Los Angeles and end up raising only $3,000, that $1,000 may be the difference between a successful show and hitchhiking home. Fans only want to pledge if they are actually going to get to see you." Fees: GigFunder takes a seven percent cut of all successful projects. Paypal takes another three percent. IndieGoGo

Launched: 2008 Purpose: A dinosaur in the crowdfunding platform, IndieGoGo launched the same year as Kickstarter with much of the same appeal: the site helped fund creative projects, lending a hand to anybody looking to finance an album, make a film, or save a magazine. In 2009, the site began catering to small businesses. Value: The San Francisco-based company offers something that Kickstarter can't: project creators may keep their money even if they can't meet their intended goal. Fees: IndieGoGo takes a four percent cut for all successful projects, with a three percent third-party processing fee tacked on top. For unsuccessful projects, the site takes nine percent. LuckyAnt

Launched: January 1, 2012 Purpose: The New York City-based site helps local shops and restaurants raise money to improve their businesses. Value: "We provide the chance to help businesses grow and compete with the big corporations that come in and run a lot of people out of business," site founder Jonathan Moyal told the Daily Dot in January. "By giving people the chance to grow, [Lucky Ant] feels like a social website and it feels like a charity.” Fees: Fees vary depending on project size. “There’s no straight answer because it varies depending on services needed, so we don’t publish anything,” Moyal wrote. The site takes zero commission if the project is not successfully funded. RocketHub

Launched: RocketHub "launched" January 1, 2010. Purpose: One look at the site's Projects page will suggest that RocketHub is the closest crowdfunding platform the Internet has to Kickstarter in design and function. The site even employs a Partners filter akin to Kickstarter's curated pages. Value: RocketHub relies on a myriad of alternative tags (Freaky, Mouth-Watering, Inspirational) to help potential backers find a project they want to support. Fees: RocketHub takes a four percent cut from all successful projects, with another four percent taken out of the total for credit card processing. Unsuccessful projects get docked eight percent by the site. Offbeatr

“If people choose to interact, they gain power, because their choice is up to them, not the marketer.”

The quote above is from Seth Godin’s new book, We Are All Weird. As his books are, it was concise and thought-provoking. The call to action in this book especially, to embrace your individuality, your “weird,” has some special applications to musicians and their fans.

The overarching point I took from the book is summed up nicely in the quote above. Seth makes the point that the twentieth century was the century of efficiency and mass-produced products. This was especially true of the music industry. We will probably never see a band as big as the Beatles again and fans’ general knowledge of what is out there will be a fraction of what it used to be, because they will find their own niche of music to be experts on and ignore the Top 40 radio that Clear Channel tries to push at them.

As the quote above implies, as fans and artists have begun to interact in a more direct manner using social media, YouTube, and crowd-sourcing sites. Online forums allow fans to engage other hardcore fans, which only further entrenches them into this new, “weird” crowd.

Record labels have lost their influence because artists and fans can now engage each other directly. Previously, labels and management selected the cities that artists toured. Pockets of fans in smaller markets didn’t have enough voice to get their favorite artists to their cities. GigFunder is changing that.

Song of the Day: Tally Hall - Turn the Lights Off

This song is off of Tally Hall's newest album, Good & Evil, which was a MUCH appreciated follow-up to their first album Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. If you don't know this band yet, check them out. They are fantastic and on tour now with Casey Shea of Family Records.

Late Night Alumni (http://www.latenightalumni.com/) are currently raising money to go on tour via Kickstarter with an enormously successful campaign that has already raised over 200% of their initial funding goal. This is money pledged by backers that may not even have the opportunity to see the band live because they live in rural areas that are unlikely to have touring acts. Pledgers are backing the band based solely on their love for the band and the prizes received for support ($35 t-shirt or a $6,000 private show, for example).

It’s awesome that Late Night Alumni have so many dedicated fans, but how can this be improved? Would even more fans be more likely to support the band if the fans had a say in the tour destinations of the bands? Probably. If passionate fans could purchase advance tickets to the shows in their cities of choice or pledge more for meet & greet opportunities with the band, it may encourage passionate fans to promote the events to their local friends even more than they currently are.

That is the goal of GigFunder: Allow fans to pledge for concerts in their own cities, where they are guaranteed a ticket to the show that they have supported.