Being a patron, just like old times

[1]

About a year back, Jack Conte, an immensely talented multi-instrument musician who is part of a quirky, popular Internet band that goes by the name Pomplamoose, spoke at a Tedx event in Sonoma Country in California, USA, about small band publishing. He spoke about how bands as well as individual musicians can start looking at music as a steady way of income without needing to be signed to a record label or requiring to be immensely popular for that matter.

Many wondered if that was possible. But last week, he and his old college roommate Sam Yam (founder of ChompOn and OurSpot websites) proved that it is very much a viable idea, by launching a website called Patreon.com.
Patreon is basically a fundraising site, something on the lines of other online funding platforms such as Kickstarters or Trumpstarters, but the difference being that instead of collecting one huge sum for a big project like an album or a movie, fans can make themselves patrons of a particular artist and choose to pay an amount of their choice (they can even choose not to pay too and just be a follower, pretty much like following on YouTube) for every song or video that the artist releases. The privileges will depend on the amount of subscription — higher the contribution, higher the benefits — and that includes monthly Google Hangouts with the top patrons, presale concert tickets, access to the artist’s stream and more. Patreon, in turn, takes 5% of money given to artists for operational expenses.
“On YouTube, there are now tens of thousands of people with hundreds of thousands of followers each. This is the burgeoning artistic middle class. It’s not a Bono or a Zach Braff, but micro-demi-celebrities. So, power and fame, instead of being in the hands of a few, is incredibly distributed,” said Conte in an interview with AllThingsD. He added, “For independent artists like me, payments shouldn’t be mandatory; they should be an option. If I set up a pay wall, nobody would share my content and that would be awful.”
The website was released officially with a song video titled Pedals from Jack Conte’s new EP on May 7, and so far the artist has earned 424 patrons who, through various levels of contribution, have pledged to pay $2230 for every video he releases. Other featured artists in Patreon include Jack’s Pomplamoose partner Nataly Dawn (who has 170 patrons with a pledge of $768 per demo) and singer Lauren O’Connel (102 patrons with $418 per song).