Apparently there's a new wrinkle in the crowd funding world called
Patreon. This one escapes from the Kickstarter project model and proposes ongoing financial support based on actual creative output.
TechDirt just did an article on it. And while I'll reserve an opinion as to how workable this will prove to be, it's still nice to see the experiments with alternative financing models are continuing. Link to TechDirt article
here.
Cool New Platform For Supporting Artists: Patreon, From Jack Conte
from the nicely-done dept
I'm obviously a big fan of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, but I've always argued that it's just one of many models that content creators can use to succeed today. In fact, for a long time, I've felt that the biggest thing that was missing from Kickstarter was any sort of ongoing payment system. It's entirely project based, and thus it's not the best tool for ongoing revenue. For many years I've been interested in ideas for more ongoing revenue streams, and even proposed the idea of "subscribing" to a band's output nearly a decade ago. So it's good to see that some folks are exploring some of these ideas in much more detail.
.
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There's a video up on YouTube which explains it all a bit more:
I'm not completely sold, either on Patreon's basic concept, or its long-term viability as a financing mechanism. But I've been wrong so many times when it comes to this sort of thing that I'm not inclined to dismiss it out of hand either.
Time will tell if this is workable. I wish them luck.
