Archive
See how GigFunder works with our new video!
We are putting the finishing touches on this video for GigFunder. When we’re finished, we’ll put it on our site, but for the time being, we thought it would be cool to share it with everyone. Check it out!
Cowgill Show!
GigFunder’s first funded show happened over the weekend!
Cowgill’s fans pledged money to bring them out for the Chicago leg of their summer tour. The show went down at the Viaduct Theater in Chicago and it was awesome. If you ever get a chance to see Cowgill live, do it.
Cowgill Rocking Out
Cowgill and Matt after the show
LaughingStock 2012
18 comedy music acts, $10, Ace Bar Chicago on Aug. 26th.
Artist Spotlight: onelinedrawing
onelinedrawing is the brainchild of Jonah Matranga of San Francisco. Jonah has had over 30 releases in his career. Most recently, his amazing fans helped fund a re-recording of the album, Visitor. Now, through GigFunder, he’s giving his fans a chance to bring him to their city to see him perform live!
If you haven’t heard of him, you should really check him out. For an industry that has been criticized of being devoid of passion and emotion, onelinedrawing is a breath of fresh air. Think: indie with a punk undertone.
Jonah has been featured on albums with a wide range of artists, from Lupe Fiasco to Deftones. Check out his website. You won’t be disappointed. If you’re into it, bring him to your city on GigFunder here!
Artist Spotlight: Cowgill
Cowgill is a Boston-based indie rock group. Cowgill’s new EP, Side One of Planted, will be released May 17th. The EP was lovingly funded by the band’s growing fan base. Check out the laid back vibe of “Plans” on the Cowgill’s Bandcamp page. It’s catchy, but there is an underlying suspense built up by the violin throughout creating a dark vibe comparable to Dr. Dog or Wilco.
Now Cowgill wants to give their fans an opportunity to bring the show to their own cities. Using GigFunder, fans can create campaigns on Cowgill’s Planted Tour to bring them out.
This is the perfect opportunity to get in on the ground floor so you can declare, “I knew them when…” at some point in the not-so-distant future.
Artists: 3 Critical Tips for Setting Up a Tour on GigFunder
- Your first available date to tour (fan-driven tours only). Fans will only be able to create campaigns until 60-days, or 2-months, prior to your first tour date. For example, if your tour launches on May 8th and your first tour date is July 8th, fans will have one day to create campaigns. Fans will have 30-days to fund those campaigns. If your tour launches on May 8th and your first tour date is August 8th, fans will have 30-days (until June 8th) to create campaigns.
- Pledge Awards must increase in value with the pledge amounts. This is a PayPal requirement. They don’t want to support a ‘donation’ system, so the value of the tickets must increase with the awards. For example, you couldn’t offer one ticket to the show for $15 and also one ticket for $25. You’d have to throw in another ticket or album or something for the higher pledge award.
- Successful tours will be the ones with the most creative pledge awards and campaign videos. You don’t have to do a video, but, if you have the time, creating a video gives fans a new way to interact with you, provides legitimacy to your tour, and has been shown on Kickstarter to be a primary contributor of success. Cool & creative pledge awards are also a great way to get more pledges. Some of you have had some really cool ones so far. I’m excited to see what you come up with!
The Death of the Local Music Scene
I am tired of being asked to “Support Local Music”. 
As Derek Miller points out, supporting local music is not a good value proposition. There is a significant investment in time (driving to the venue, giving up a night, etc.), expense (gas, cover, etc.), and credibility dollars invested from dragging a friend along with you. If the show wasn’t great, you feel burned.
When was the last time you walked out of a show and said, “That show was terrible but at least I’m supporting local music.”?
I never say that.
Who filters their playlists / Pandora stations for exclusively local music (if that’s even possible)?
Nobody.
There’s a big reason ‘local music’ doesn’t mean what it used to mean: The Internet. Look, I can see why checking out the local music scene was a big deal in the past.
Discovering new artists before they got big was only possible locally. Local artists were the only ones you had a reasonable expectation of interacting with and fans want to have a relationship with their favorite artists. If an artist was known to anyone from a distant state or country, it’s because there was a significant promotion and distribution investment in that artist by his or her label. Today, people rarely go through the effort to go to a bunch of local shows to discover the next big thing because of the large investment of time and money and there is so much crappy music in any local scene.
Now, people can scour blogs, take recommendations from Rdio or Spotify, or listen to a Pandora station to discover new artists (for free!). The location of these artists is inconsequential. Artists can distribute their own music cheaply all over the globe and interact with fans directly via Facebook, Twitter, or various other social networking sites. Being local no longer matters.
Being good, memorable, remarkable, or surprising matters. Engaging your fans matters. Having a solid live show matters.
Remarkable artists are gathering small numbers of fans all over before being ‘discovered’ by labels. This presents an interesting new problem for small artists though. If their fans are scattered across the country and they don’t have the critical mass for a nationwide tour yet, how can they get on the road and engage their fans live?
This is the problem we’re trying to solve at GigFunder. Let the fans decide which ‘local’ acts they want to see without being limited by the geographic location of new artists.
