Bands funded by their fans

Aiming to empower independent artists, SellaBand has created a platform that enables fans to sponsor bands, and get a piece of the action in return. How it works: fans, dubbed Believers, find an artist they like on SellaBand.com. For USD 10, they can buy a share, or ‘Part’. Once the band has sold 5,000 parts, SellaBand arranges a professional recording, including top studios, A&R managers and producers. Believers receive a limited edition cd of the recording. The interesting twist is that the songs are then made available as free downloads. Income comes from advertising revenues, which are split three ways: artist, believer and SellaBand. The company will also sell cds through regular channels, sharing profits with artists and believers. Since both believers and artists benefit from getting 5,000 parts sold, both are likely to actively promote the band (and SellaBand) everywhere musicians and music fans are active: on their blogs, on their MySpace pages, in online communities, to their friends, etc. Once the recording has taken place, the same goes for SellaBand’s download portal: artists and believers profit from ad revenues created by driving traffic to their download page. SellaBand was founded by ex-music industry execs, and it will be interesting to see how this one pans out. Opportunities? Apply the same concept to other forms of art and entertainment, products and services, or set up platforms for specific music genres. (For more on crowd-funding, check out our previous articles about A Swarm of Angels and I am Verity.)