Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

This is really unbelievable: former Dresden Doll’s Amanda Palmer just set a record for raising funds for recording, promotion, tour support, and an accompanying art book in Kickstarter. She asked her fans for $100.000 but achieved over a million dollars! Congrats! Wish I could do the same thing.

But to achieve this success  “You have to have fans before you can ask them to help you,” as Palmer herself has said. I heard from a friend, who knows her well, that Palmer is everyday in touch with her fans by twitting, facebooking, etc..  She has worked very hard to build up a devoted and engaged fan base which isn’t an easy thing to do. You have to love in what you’re doing and share it with your family, friends and fans. It means also that you have to believe in yourself and be very disciplined in your music life. I think Palmer’s success is certainly good news for independent musicians who play music for people and want to be a postive force in society.

In the old days we had patrons who financially supported the arts in general, such as musicians, composers, dancers, painters, film directors, writers, theatre companies, etc. Isn’t Kickstarter the modern patron of arts?

Here is a list of fan-funding platforms for music or any creative projects:

1. RocketHub which is a launchpad for independent artists and entrepreneurs to leverage the financial power of their community.

2. Kickstarter is a funding platform for any knd of creative projects, everything from traditional forms of art (like theater and music) to contemporary forms (like design and games)

3. PledgeMusic  helps artists and bands design a specifically tailored fundraising campaign to raise money for their next release.

4. Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform where people who want to raise money can create fundraising campaigns to tell their story and get the word out.

5. Sponsume (in the UK) is the first crowdfunding platform dedicated to creativity and innovation launched in the UK and Europe!