Crowdfunding Your Music with Kickstarter

Crowdfunding Your Music Project with Kickstarter

By NationWide Source
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

If you’re wondering how to raise money for your next music project, and wondering if crowdfunding is an option, know this: using a Kickstarter campaign and trusting her fans to fund her project, musician Amanda Palmer raised over a million dollars. While these results are abnormal, they suggest that finding the funds for your project is feasible.

About Kickstarter Campaigns

Kickstarter campaigns are absolutely free, easy to start, and have only a few guidelines, including:

  • Projects must be related to the arts.
  • Projects must have a specific, obtainable goal with a measurable outcome. This means no fundraising to “launch my music career,” but you can fund an album production or release.
  • You can’t offer financial sharing to donors.
  • You can’t provide awards in bulk (defined as more than 10).
  • You can determine the rewards you give to your donors, but only within limits (no alcohol, GMOs, drugs, cigarettes, advice, beauty products, etc).
  • If funding goals are reached, you must complete the project or return the money to the donors.

Creating your Kickstarter Campaign

To create your project, go to Kickstarter.com and click on start new project. Create an account. Provide a project picture, description, location, and goal amount; set the number of days for pledging.

Next, determine your pledge tiers and rewards. Kickstarter suggests that you set a pledge tier that is under $20, giving people who have a little money the chance to support your project. Set a few other pledge tiers for fans that are interested in pledging more. For rewards, you can offer anything from a copy of your new album to an acoustic home concert. Set the values for the reward around the same price as they would go for in the retail marketplace.

Lastly, make it personal. Add a video to your page talking about your project or playing a song from the album you’re trying to fund.

Promote and Share

Kickstarter embeds the Facebook like button and the Twitter tweet buttons to your project’s page. While some people do browse Kickstarter looking for projects, you need to get the word out about your campaign. Send personal messages to friends, acquaintances, and interested parties. Don’t post or send too many messages, though, or you will come across as a spammy, money-hungry musician.

Additional details and answers can be found on Kickstarter’s site, especially on the Kickstarter FAQ, Kickstarter School, Guidelines, and Contact pages.

Have you used Kickstarter, either to raise money for a project or to help fund another artist’s project? How was your experience?

See also: Crowdfunding: 5 Websites for Funding Your Album Recording.



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