Bands funded by their fans — Update: over USD 1 million invested

Last week, SellaBand celebrated their first anniversary with a ‘SellaBration’ in Amsterdam’s pop temple, Paradiso. Our description of the concept when they launched: 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. So—what happened over the past year? Fans have invested over USD 1,000,000 in the bands they believe in. The first band to raise USD 50,000 was Nemesea, which did so in 83 days. Six other bands have also raised 50K. Three of them—Nemesea, Cubworld and Second Person—have produced and launched their first album, and the other four are hard at work in the recording studio. In total, 4,806 artists signed up to SellaBand. As pointed out by SellaBand’s Music Director, Dagmar Heijmans: “Twelve months ago we didn’t know if it would work. Well, we’ve proven that. People are willing to pay USD 10 (or more) to be part of an artist’s success.” For the coming year, SellaBand aims to make it easier for anyone to operate like a record executive, by giving them the tools to scout talent, track the recording process and promote ‘the heck out of the artist’ once an album has been released. We’ll keep an eye on them and will dutifully report back to you 😉