Pledge: the future of fan-funding?

“Great, another fan funding website that offers musicians a heap of false promises, anti climaxes and £0.0001p per hour of reviewing music” I thought..

Fan funding band investment websites where unsigned musicians sign up, submit their music and try to raise some ridiculous amount of money to fund professionally recording and marketing an album have been around for a while now…and as you can probably guess, I wasn’t exactly jumping out of my chair when I heard about Pledge Music; the new kid on the block.

Fortunately, I gave Pledge Music a chance and spent a few minutes researching the company and looking around their site. It turns out these guys aren’t another Slice the Pie, Band stocks or Sellaband, in actual fact they propose something very exciting.

I’m impressed, but while this all sound great, there was one other thing that I was particularly impressed by; Pledge have put their face on their website. When I was reading through the pages and looking at their work I could tell I was talking to just a couple of really enthusiastic musicians sat In an office doing what’s passionate to them, with Pledge there is no faceless corporate branding, just a friendly personal community of like minded musicians.

But I decided that to clear any doubt and to clarify my judgement I wanted to hear the motivation behind Pledge from the horses mouth; Mr Benji Rogers – founder of Pledge Music.

I asked Benji “what exactly is it that Pledge Music is trying to achieve and how do you feel Pledge can help developing musicians?”

He kindly replied with the following:

“Pledge can help musicians at any level but in the developing stages we provide some of the tools to help solidify the relationship with your fans as things begin to take off. Your first fans, the ones who have been there from the beginning are going to be so very key to your future success and so by establishing early on that they are important to you they will help to promote what ever it is that you decide to do. A Pledge Music project can help to fund demos, singles, EP’s, albums, tours, PR & marketing, at what ever level, so there is a way we can help at any stage. “

“I see us as being not only an alternative to what is there, but also as a process that can work in concert with the industry as is. An artists successful Pledge provides would-be labels, publishers, studios, producers and press with a meaningful story as to why they would want to work with an artist or a band if that is the path the artist wishes to take. As we take no rights whatsoever artists are not confined to the ‘only with us’ model and so you can do a successful Pledge and sign a deal at the same time. We want to help and not ‘hang on to’ as it were and I feel that we can add value to what ever path an artist is on.”

Now, for a company that shares its name with something as mundane as a furniture cleaning product, I think these guys offer a cool alternative service to the music industry that really is a breath of fresh air!

(Time for me to quit my day job and work in creating slogans I think..)

For more information on Pledge Music, check out their site, and don’t forget to sign up!
www.pledgemusic.com

Tags:band stocks, fan funded investment sites, fan funding, pledge, slice the pie