The arts have seen a rapid\u00a0growth of funding possibilities among the like-minded, the so-called sharing community. Support is exchanged directly between those creating the art, and those appreciating it, a logical concept if ever there was one.<\/p>\n
Crowdfunding’s been around for a while, and we have contributed to\u00a0several projects via Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, etc. I\u2019ve also been recently\u00a0intrigued by Patreon<\/a>, which takes crowd funding beyond one-off projects, and facilitates monthly patronage of artists in exchange for content. Your fans can pledge you a certain amount, every time you do something – a video, a recording, etc. Suppose you have 50 fans who all say they\u2019ll pay you 2$ for your next video: voil\u00e0, you get 100$, once you\u2019ve done it and posted it on Patreon. Pie in the sky? Doesn’t seem to be: in 2013, Patreon\u2019s most popular artists grossed over 100,000$ a year from the platform, an awful lot more than you\u2019ll ever get from YouTube, iTunes or Spotify.<\/p>\n Apart from the obvious financial interest for artists, the system is even more direct than traditional crowd funding. It creates \u00a0It\u00a0also builds up an ongoing relationship with the artist’s work, and rewards those who do a lot.\u00a0At the moment we’re all still lucky he puts them up on YouTube, but\u00a0I’d totally pledge in order\u00a0to get a steady stream of recordings\u00a0from e.g. Sylvain Blassel<\/a> delivered straight to my mailbox.<\/p>\n