How to Raise Money as a Musician

So, you have a big project coming up. You’re recording an album. That means your burning cds, printing album covers, touring, feeding yourself during this whole process, and keeping up with strings and equipment purchases. How do you do it? What happens when you are so tapped out that you can’t dig any deeper into your savings account or maxed out credit card?

A new website, Kickstarter, is here to help you with your financial necessities. Kickstarter is glorified pan-handling. You put together a project, say – the recording of a new album. Then you send this info to Kickstarter HQ for approval. Once you have their blessing, you go about raising money.

So, say you want to raise $4,000 for a new album. You put together information, perhaps a funny video, and describe what you are doing to your family, friends, and fans. The kicker is – you only get the money if you raise the total amount. The people who pledge the money only get charged if you raise the entire amount.

But, what a great idea for musicians in need of some seed money to get to the next level. And the best way to utilize this is to send this to the fans you have built up on the social networking sites. You’ve probably already maxed out your local friend’s checkbook by inviting them to every show. But, what about the person following your music every time you post of YouTube video? What if they donated $5 to your next album? It would all add up.

So, don’t be discouraged as a starving artist. The music industry has changed so that every band has to become an entrepreneur out of necessity. The artist is not going to get a million dollar check from the label anymore to go and record an album. The artist will need to raise this by themselves, just like a new business owner would need to do. Kickstarter seems like a good tool to raise seed money.

Stay tuned,
Erik
erikrostad.com
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