Payout time for SellaBand fans

We’ve featured music industry innovators SellaBand several times over the past year and a half (1, 2 and 3), so we were pleased to hear that they’ve just reached a new milestone. To recap: fans sponsor unknown bands and artists by buying one of the band’s shares, or parts. Once a band has raised USD 50,000 by selling 5,000 parts, SellaBand sets up a professional recording session. The recorded songs are sold to new fans, and both the artists and owners of their parts (Believers) receive a share of the income generated through music sales and advertising revenues. This week, Believers who own parts in Cubworld, Nemesea, Second Person and Maitreya will receive their first payout. The money is transferred to their Believer Balance. They can use it to buy parts in new bands, or have the money paid into their PayPal account. While the first payout isn’t massive (in SellaBand’s words: “Enough to buy a beer at the pub, or maybe even a round or two”), it’s a sign that SellaBand’s crowdfunding and crowdrewarding model is working as planned. Ad revenues are expected to grow over the next few months, as SellaBand is working on deals with media agencies for countries outside their main three markets—the Netherlands, United States and United Kingdom. Time for other crowdingsourcing and crowdfunding ventures to start rewarding their faithful followers and ‘citizen marketers’?