#140: Roundtable – The Biggest Album launch in History?

U2 and Apple Album releaseIn this edition of the remarkably entertaining and educational DIY Musician Podcast, The Bolt has a baby, Kevin launches a fan funding campaign (and gains a few grey hairs in the process) and the Podcasters discuss the surprise album release by U2. U2 partnered with Apple to give all iTunes users free access to their newest album. Apple and U2 are calling this the largest record release of all time. But not everybody is happy about the way Apple went about it.

In the news: CD Baby launches CD Baby Free! Now you can sell music on CDBaby.com without signup fees. More info on CD Baby Free here. Soundcloud is getting in the advertising game and select artists may reap the benefits. But will Soundclouds changes benefit indie musicians? Also . . . streaming music subscribers are growing in leaps and bounds.

Tune in for all this goodness and more!

#139: Jack Conte – Turning fans into patrons

Jack Conte Jack Conte became well known for being half of the musical duo that makes up the band Pomlamoose. A few years back Pomplamoose burst onto the scene through the usage of YouTube and “video songs.” You can hear more about that video song concept in episode 96 of our podcast.

In this episode, Jack is back with a new concept and a new company called Patreon. With the desire to find a simple way for Pomplamoose to collect a small amount of money from fans every time a new video is released, Jack decided to build his own solution. The result was www.Patreon.com . Patreon helps artists turn fans into patrons, who support them monetarily whenever new art is released.

If you’ve been considering the different fan funding models out there, this is definitely one to check out.

Link to previous episode Jack was on:
https://podcast.cdbaby.com/2010/07/096-jack-conte-pomplamoose-and-the-video-song/

Patreon: http://www.patreon.com

#130: Benji Rogers – Fan Participation and Pledge Music

Benji-Rogers-Photo-by-Matt-Furman-700

Benji Rogers founded Pledge Music to help musicians and fans share in the experience of creating albums. 6 years ago when Benji started Pledge Music, there were fan-funding platforms popping up left and right, but nothing that really focused on fan participation.

Benji explains that fans are given “thousands ways to buy music,” but what they are not getting is really compelling reasons to participate in an artists life.”

Benji believes that traditional crowd funding focuses too much on the amount of money being raised and not enough on the creative process and the artist-fan relationship. Pledge Music is designed to bridge that gap.

Questions or comments about this episode? Let us know in the comment section below!