Fan funding is all the rage right now. I’m sure you’ve seen it, on Kickstarter and Pledge Music. It’s a lovely way of people who dig a particular artist or band helping out with the logistics of making the music happen. There are costs involved in making music, and while they’re less than a tenth of what they were 20 years ago, they’re still there, and the cost of living has gone up massively so time is more expensive than ever.
But it seems to me that Kickstarter is only really necessary if you don’t have anything else that people can pay for if they want to help out. And I, as you well know, have LOADS of music out there already. All of it worth listening to 🙂
So, in lieu of starting a Kickstarter/Pledge Music/whatever fan funding project, I’m just going to invite you to buy some music if you want to help Lobelia and I cover the costs involved in us making the records we’re working on at the moment …and get yourself loads of amazing music to soundtrack your life with!
There are two ways to do that:
- Firstly, If you go to http://music.stevelawson.net you can buy whichever of my albums you want to. The price deal is that you’re invited to ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ – if the music is worth a pound to you, pay that. If it’s worth £50 and you have the means to pay that, feel free to do so. It’s completely up to you.
- Secondly, as you may know, we sell 4GB USB sticks at shows that contain everything we’ve ever released. Thus far it’s about 18 albums, a 45 minute solo live video and my novel. But if you order one now, we’ll send you the stick before we leave for the States on May 4th, and it will have on it:
- my new solo album (a month before it comes out) (in 320k MP3 And 24bit FLAC format)
- Lobelia’s new solo album (in 320k MP3 And 24bit FLAC format)
- My duo album with Mike Outram (in 320k MP3 And 24bitFLAC format)
- The other 18 albums by Lobelia and I (in 320k MP3 format where possible (some rarities lower)
- The live video
- My Novel
This will be the only way to get my solo album before the end of May… It won’t be out online til then, possibly til the beginning of June, but you can have it for just £25 by clicking the paypal button below. Simple!
There’s something wonderfully straightforward about supporting music you like by buying it. I’m looking forward to doing just that with your new solo work.
I’ve been wondering whether I should use a pledge service thingy for this new project we’re going to be recording over the summer… Not convinced about it yet.
“If it’s worth £50 and you have the means to pay that”
– I love the second half of this sentence. The idea that someone would be in a huge conundrum because they decided it was worth £50 but just couldn’t afford it, really made my day! On that note, do you think with the pay what you think it’s worth model people ever get themselves into that mindset or is their decision always relative to their own financial situation? It’s a really nice idea, turning the value of someone’s payment into a relative rather than an absolute.
PS: I decided not to use Pledge for my latest album – I started on the road to it but found it all a bit faddy and decided I could raise money myself without having to pay a massive cut to a middleman. I have built wooden boxes instead – people have been happy to buy them for £50.
Hi Andy,
Just chucking my personal thought about “pay what you think it’s worth” in- my own situation means that what I pay is very much relative to my financial situation, mainly because I don’t earn many pennies and so have to be pretty careful each month. However, if I had a large amount of disposable income I know that I would happily pay far more than the standard £10-15 that you might expect to pay for a cd from a shop/artist website for music from artists that mean a lot to me.
Cheers,
H
I love that about PWYTIW – that value is sometimes greater than the cash available, but instead of not getting the music, you just pay what you can afford. I’d hate to think of someone spending their last few quid on some downloads of my music – I’d much rather they spent it on a nutritious meal and listened to the music while eating it 🙂
But I have had emails and messages from people who said that ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ was unfair to them emotionally because they could never afford what the music was worth to them… Pause for thought, but I’m sure they’ll get over it 😉
It requires a fairly grown up relationship with one’s listeners. I’m sure both Lo and I would have made WAY more money from Kickstarter than we will through this. If this was about true to accrue large amounts of cash, that’s definitely the route we’d have gone. But ideologically, this feels right – we don’t need to ‘upsell’ anything – we’ve got music there to be had, we believe in that music, and want people to be able to have it all and make their own minds up about which bits are their favourites.
In other news, the tracks that Lobelia’s been recording are blowing my mind. It’s a covers record, and she’s taken some amazing songs and done breathtaking versions of them 🙂