Does kickstarter suck? Tom wants to know.

I just read this interview with Eric Victorino from the Limousines and Matt DeMello – “some bitter stranger on the internet”

The Limousines are raising money with Kickstarter, This Matt dude goes on a rant in the interview with them about how kickstarter is terrible and the bands are greedy and the fans are financing their albums and tours with no reward. Somehow Matt argues that the money from these campaigns is investment capital and the fans should have equity in the artist’s work if they give money.

This dude is obviously off his rocker, but lot’s of people have similar bad feelings about kickstarter for one reason or another. I think most of those BAD feelings stem from the thousands of BAD KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGNS where artists are begging for money like charity. It’s not charity if you are creating something of real value that people want but it IS charity if you are asking for money and giving nothing in return but gratitude. Please, if you’re in a band and want to use kickstarter, follow this simple guideline:

Treat your campaign pitch as a presale

You have a vision for an album, a show, and other artwork but not the financial means to produce it. Explain your vision to your fans in your video. They might REALLY want what you’re making! They also might not.. The kickstarter campaigns actually work as a form of market validation with risk aversion. #businessjargon #sorry. A business manager investing money ahead of time in an artistic project has to weigh the size of an audience and distribution along with qualitative factors to determine if something will make money or lose money, then act accordingly with investment or no investment. By going directly to the audience with a pre-order you’ll see if your artwork is commercially viable. If you make your goal, it’s a viable product (which a label missed the opportunity to profit from, and now that profit goes to you). If you don’t make your goal, it’s not a viable product (a business manager would have been wise to not invest, they would have lost money) This is not to say that art of any kind should only be made if it’s commercially viable… many amazing things are made without ever making any money.

Please be kind enough to share your opinion. I can tell you I’ll probably use kickstarter again for one project or another. If I could self finance everything I want to do and make I would, but it’s not possible. I’m really grateful for these tools that help us share our ideas with others and raise the money needed to make some cool stuff happen.