6 Best Crowdfunding Sites for Indie Music Artists

Usually, when indie musicians get together and talk about what it takes to be successful, crowdfunding comes up. Crowdfunding is a great way for indie bands and musicians to raise money for their next big project, whether it is a music video or an entire album.

This blog post is written for an indie musician who wants to fund a project or an album.

You’re an indie artist, you’ve got a new project in the works, but you need some extra funding to make it happen. What do you do? Well, there are a lot of options these days including banks (haha), personal loans, family and friends, investing your own time and money in building your music career…

The best option for an indie artist is to get the fans themselves involved in funding your next project. There are many sites that allow you to collect pledges for various projects like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Some are more focused on music related projects like Sellaband (now defunct) and Pledgemusic.com

The 6 Best Crowdfunding Sites For Indie Music Artists:

1. PledgeMusic: The focus here is on funding music related projects. A few years ago they were getting a bit of flack because they had a higher percentage fee than Kickstarter. However, they recently lowered their fees and now offer a 15% fee (10% if you use the all-or-nothing model). You can keep 100% ownership of your music while offering all sorts of cool perks to pledgers, like signed albums

More and more indie electronic music artists are looking to crowdfunding to finance their new albums and tours. We’ve scoured the web to find the best crowdfunding sites that can help you get your project funded.

1.Kickstarter

Kickstarter has been a great resource for indie music artists and other types of projects. It’s one of the most well-known and respected crowdfunding sites out there, but it’s also very competitive. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform, so you have to reach your fundraising goal to get any money from your backers. Unlike many other crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter doesn’t take any percentage of the funds raised.

2.PledgeMusic

PledgeMusic is our favorite crowdfunding site for independent artists, especially musicians. It’s easy to set up, has a low 5% fee (plus another 3% for payment processing), and you keep all the money you raise even if you don’t reach your goal! With PledgeMusic you can easily sell preorders of your album or music video along with all sorts of cool fan packages like signed merchandise and experiences (like meeting up with you at a show). PledgeMusic also offers great marketing tools like email templates, social media sharing options, and banner ads that can help promote your project. Unfortunately they

In my last post, I talked about how indie musicians can use Bandcamp to make money from their music. In this post, I’ll be covering some of the best crowdfunding sites for indie musicians.

What is crowdfunding?

In a nutshell, crowdfunding is a way for indie artists to pre-sell their music to fans before it’s been recorded. The basic idea is that you ask fans to support your project by pre-ordering your album (or making donations) in exchange for rewards and perks. When you reach your fundraising goal, you can record and release your album knowing that there’s already an audience waiting to hear it. If you don’t meet your goal, no money changes hands and you simply go on with life as usual.

Crowdfunding isn’t new but it’s only recently started gaining popularity as a way for indie musicians to fund their albums. Kickstarter and Indiegogo are two of the most well-known platforms but there are now several sites that cater specifically towards musicians. Here are my top 6 picks with some pros, cons and things to keep in mind.

There is no doubt that indie artists are pushing the envelope of music in a way that major labels can’t and don’t. Not only are they creating more interesting sounds, but they are also way more willing to take risks.

And it’s true that more and more indie artists are having success with crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, PledgeMusic and Indiegogo.

But there’s one problem.

The bigger platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo don’t seem to be designed to promote independent artists. Their platforms are built primarily for tech guys who want to launch their next iPhone app or gadget; not for musicians who want to raise money to record an album, tour or shoot a music video.

So what’s an indie musician to do?

For over a year now, I have been a regular contributor to an amazing blog called MusicianWages.com. I recommend this site to every independent musician that wants to know how to make money with their music.

The purpose of this post is to share with you some of the articles that I have written for MusicianWages.com and also give you some additional background about me and why I write for them.

Why I Write for MusicianWages.com

This website is owned by my friend Brian Thompson who has been creating websites for independent musicians since 1996. Brian is one of the pioneers in the indie music world and has been helping artists make money from their music since before Google was around!

I first met Brian when I joined his mastermind group in December 2010 and joined his private forum called Musician Income Forum. Soon after joining his private forum, I started writing articles for him on a variety of topics – but mostly about online marketing strategies for independent musicians.

I wrote regularly until October 2012 when Brian asked me if I would be interested in writing a weekly column on his new blog, MusicianWages.com. Of course, my answer was yes!