New Music 2013 - Part 4 - Funding For Something to Happen

We all know it. Music costs - illegal music costs us all more - but that aside making it is far more expensive than buying legal recorded music. There are various options, rarely ever open to new and aspiring artists until recently, to harness the enthusiasm of music fans to directly fund a project they want to reach realization. One such, that has recently rolled-out in the UK, is Kickstarter. I have previous experience with it in its US version and that was without issue (a US based project that was very successful).
As is all such speculative investment it is not without risk but there are upsides - the investment can be small (from £5 typically, but that may be proportional to the sum required for the project), a definitive end date for the appeal for funding and no penalty if the desired target is not reached. Funds are only taken and then released to the appellant upon successful attainment of the target - if it isn't reached you lose nothing.
OK I thought, when I heard Kickstarter was coming to the UK; I won't go looking. I'll wait and see what comes along and grabs my attention although it was never likely to be anything other than music...
This, though I didn't know it at the time, proved to be that appeal. About five weeks ago I attended the first North Dorset Folk Festival. It was a great day and one of many acts was Cloudi Lewis.

I have reviewed it briefly.
So why did I choose to support this? Well, quite simply that performance was wonderful. A band doing what they want to do and if that is the current vogue then that's all to the good. If it wasn't then, hell, they'd probably do it anyway. That, to be honest, is the attitude that the music industry needs even more of right now. I'm prepared to put a small sum of money behind that dream...

There are green shoots, as the old saying goes, but they still need feeding and encouragement to survive.