We wanted to write something about a direct-to-fan service we’re going to be working with a lot in the future. That service is called PledgeMusic. If you haven’t heard of it before, here’s an overview.
PledgeMusic helps artists and bands design a specifically tailored fundraising campaign to raise money for their next release. Whether you’re looking to record and distribute your next album, or you’ve already recorded it and you just want to gauge your fans receptiveness to unique formats like vinyl, PledgeMusic makes it extremely easy.
Using PledgeMusic also gives you a way to set up different tier levels, so that each fan has a way to contribute as little, or as much as they like. For instance, take a look at Ginger Wildheart’s newest Project. Here he’s not just doing an album for one of his bands, but two albums for his band Mutation, and another one for his band Hey! Hello!. But fans of each band can contribute separately. So if you like pop, you’ll be able to contribute to the Project, and only receive music for Hey! Hello!. But if you’re into “guitar riffs”, which Ginger discusses a lot in his very funny preview video, then you can contribute and receive just the two albums from Mutation.
What’s really interesting about this approach is by piggy backing these two bands together, Ginger is getting each band cross pollinated by the other. Marketing costs are lower with this method as well. We have never seen someone do this before, but Ginger is an expert. His Triple Album Project debuted at #27 on the UK Top 40, and ranked as high as #9, when he used PledgeMusic. So it’s no wonder he’s trying and experimenting with new angles on the platform.
PledgeMusic does a few things differently than other platforms out there. And these features definitely made the choice easy when we decided we wanted to work with a direct-to-fan fundraising platform. Obviously them being only about music was important. Even though anyone can use our service to sell their digital and physical products, we’ve always developed with selling music in mind. But there’s something else they do that made us do a double take. Normally on other fundraising platforms, when the Project is over, meaning the date of the end of the Project is reached, fans can no longer contribute. This makes for major headaches for the Project Creator, because if they don’t also have a place to let fans preorder the album outside of funraising, then they’re essentially stuck selling nothing until their album is officially released. This idea of switching the fan flow to your store during the preorder process completely fragments the sale of your record. Just like when labels and bands use our service for their preorders, we always like to see them using one store the entire time. PledgeMusic has this same idea in mind, because even when your date is reached, and your Project goal is met, fans can still contribute and preorder the album. The date is just the Project’s state change signifier. It lets the fans know the project has moved onto to the next step, not that the Project is over. Only when the Project is in the Released state, does preordering stop. This is exactly how a typical preorder works. And it’s also the perfect spot to switch sales to your online store.
Over the next month or so we’re going to be working very closely with PledgeMusic to make your transition from the Released state of your album on PledgeMusic, to what most people would call, the Available state in your online store easier. We’ve got a couple of very cool ideas in mind, so we’ll keep everyone informed as they develop.
