EDITORIAL
Making Money With
by Gareth Shute
DIRECT ARTIST SUPPORT
The digital music era
The most straightforward way a fan can
means artists can now
show their support for an artist is by
easily connect with fans
simply paying them directly to do their
work, often with the promise of a special
around the country and
reward in return. It has now become a
across the world. As many regular occurrence for artists to set up
crowdfunding pages to support the
artists and labels are
of a new work and there are plenty
showing, there are creative creation
of options to choose from - whether its
ways to make the online
local sites like Boosted and Pledgeme or
international sites like Kickstarter (who have
marketplace work for you
an NZ version of their website).
as a musician. Here’s a
It pays to be imaginative when deciding
few of the most popular
on what rewards you might offer in return
approaches, which will
for crowdfunding contributions. A recent
hopefully get you thinking campaign by Lawrence Arabia for his Taite
Music Prize nominated album Singles Club
about what is possible in
gave supporters advance access to a new
this area.
song every month for twelve months,
6 • NZ MUSIC COMMISSION MAY BOOK 2020
and higher payments received a copy of
the finished album (on CD or vinyl) and/
or a T-shirt and/or a teatowel at the end of
the year. Other artists have even offered
to perform live at people’s houses if the
pledge is high enough.
Bandcamp have a range of tools you can
use, including letting your audience pay
what they want for a track, or specifying
a minimum and letting fans pay more if
they wish (Bandcamp report fans do pay
extra 50% much of the time). In their Artist
Tools, they have a embeddable player
that you can use to showcase your music
on other platforms and if you also publish
your music to SoundCloud, you can add
a “Support” button to your profile that
links to your Bandcamp page. Bandcamp
strongly recommend you upload lots of
good-looking images, so spend some