Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter boosts creative business online
Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every week, tens of thousands of visitors to the webpage pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.
Since 2009, Kickstarter offers creative people an online opportunity to present proposals for art and design projects. Visitors to the website can donate a few dollars to a project off their liking. This way, the projects will be funded by the crowd.
This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Instead, they offer products and experiences that are unique to each project. Many projects will be launched with Creative Commons licenses. This often means the general public can view the creations free of charge, which makes sense, as the crowd has funded the project to begin with. Basically, we are pre-paying creative works through Kickstarter.
On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. This protects the creators, as they aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk. Furthermore, the sponsors do not lose money on cancelled projects. If a project is fully funded, the Kickstarter administration collects a small percentage of these funds to be able to operate their business.
Actually, many of the proposals have raised more money than envisaged by the creators. Kickstarter started in 2009. Since that time, many artists have raised crowd funding that really kickstarted their carreer. Every month, several writers, photographers and filmmakers are able to start working on their project and get the chance to set their name.
For example, soul musician Felicia Barton’s will start recording her debut solo project, made possible through this crowd funding. Hopefully these careers skyrocket. Despite all copyright related challenges the creative sector faces these (online) days, this innovative business concept evolved towards an mature online platform that generates income for authors, contributes to creative diversity and manages to stay around for quite a bit longer than just the start-up period.
Read more about crowdfunding on Future of Copyright:
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