In 2010, Kickstarter ushered in a new era of fan-supported albums
December 23, 2010
Back in October 2010, My First Earthquake set up a rather daunting Kickstarter fund: $5000 to fund their next full-length record. Within three days, the band’s goal was reached. The members of My First Earthquake now have two things they can be happy about:
- Their next album is substantially funded and they are, in fact, ready to “destroy a recording studio.”
- They have loyal fans who jumped at the chance to donate their cash just to hear more My First Earthquake tunes.
And this is all because Kickstarter made it easy to do so. Several other local bands and musicians have utilized Kickstarter for their 2010 projects, including Lia Rose, Sonny Smith, Battlehooch and Shuteye Unison.
In case you’re not already familiar with Kickstarter, here is the general idea:
Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors. Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands. Every Kickstarter project must be fully funded before its time expires or no money changes hands. Why?
- It’s less risk for everyone. If you need $5,000, it’s tough having $2,000 and a bunch of people expecting you to complete a $5,000 project.
- It allows people to test concepts (or conditionally sell stuff) without risk. If you don’t receive the support you want, you’re not compelled to follow through. This is huge!
- It motivates. If people want to see a project come to life, they’re going to spread the word.
In sum, it’s a means to raise money for endeavors, with a significant amount of assurance built in.
So how does Kickstarter differ from, say, putting a big PayPal button on your band’s homepage asking for donations? Or stripping the entire process of digitalization and just putting a donation box out on your concert merch table? Fundamentally, there is no difference – any money donated still ends up in the band’s pockets, to be spent at the band’s discretion.
Except that Kickstarter provides both a visualization of the band’s goal and confidence that the donated funds will be used as promised. Most anyone can set up a Kickstarter project (from Bacon Camps to solo performances to bringing back a beloved theater – although not all ideas are right for Kickstarter), but if the goal isn’t reached within a pre-determined amount of time, the money is returned to those who donated and the user is back at square one.
For bands, if a fan chooses to donate, and the goal is reached, the money goes to making the new album; in fact, users who reach their goals are expected to provide updates. For instance, My First Earthquake have “been privately posting to our Kickstarter backers thoughout,” as well as providing updates through outlets like Facebook (and receiving rather positive exchanges). This is opposed to the more traditional donation outlet, where you don’t necessarily know where your donation goes if enough isn’t raised for the proposed project.
People who donate to a band’s Kickstarter campaign are acutely aware from the start that their hard-earned money will not go to waste and instead will go directly to the music, a.k.a. the real reason that they donated in the first place. It is a full-circle, collaborative experience between artist and fan – unlike before, when it was tough to establish an easy, direct connection in the process of making records. The process is also mutually beneficial (relatively speaking) – Kickstarter projects can offer incentive to backers at various levels, in order to show appreciation to those who donated. For example, My First Earthquake’s Kickstarter levels were broken down as follows: [More...]
Related Posts:
From our staff: Best shit from an old notebook in 2010
December 22, 2010
Residents at the BAM (Berkeley Art Museum)
Best family show:
The Finches at Indie Mart, Thee Parkside, 11/7/10 – I am proud to say that my kids (ages 4 and 7) saw their first club show at Thee Parkside, “SF’s Premier Dive Venue.”
Best road trip:
Bonnie Prince Billy in Felton, October 25
Best living room show:
Will Johnson (Centro-Matic) in Oakland, September
Best reanimations:
Guided By Voices at The Warfield, 10/5/10
The Gories at The Independent, 9/9/10
Buzzcocks at The Uptown, 6/4/10
Residents at BAM (Berkeley Art Museum), 6/4/10
Best show at a dying club:
Abe Vigoda, Shannon and the Clams, Lovvers at 21 Grand, 3/6/10
Best show at a thriving club:
The Mantles, Fresh and Onlys, Fungi Girls at The Knockout, 7/29/10
Best resurrected album:
Riley – Grandma’s Roadhouse
Best fresh album:
Let’s Wrestle – We are the Men You’ll Grow to Love Soon
Related Posts:
From our staff: the 10 best live music memories in 2010
December 22, 2010
Monotonix at Treasure Island Music Festival 2010
The 10 Best Live Music Memories of 2010 (in chronological order):
- Tune-Yards unleashing her inner warrior at the Rickshaw Stop, 5/27/10
- Hunx and His Punx, with an, umm . . . aerobic performance at the Independent, 6/29/10
- Thao and her local star-studded back-up singers at The Bay Bridged’s own Regional Bias, 7/23/10
- The She’s crushing Best Coast’s “When I’m With You†at Rock Make, 8/22/10
- Discovering a new (but non-local) fave, Rainbow Arabia, at one of the best shows I saw all year: Sister Crayon, Religious Girls, Lazer Sword at the Rickshaw Stop, 8/26/10
- Efterklang’s giddy performance at Bottom of the Hill, 9/20/10
- Thinking of creative ways to convince myself that I wasn’t cold and wet at the Treasure Island Music Festival, 10/16/10 & 10/17/10
- Wondering if Monotonix’s frontman Ami was going to empty a bag of wet trash (replete with festival foodstuffs) on us in the crowd or on the drummer Haggai during their Treasure Island performance, 10/17/10
- Having a few too many birthday beverages at the Extra Action Marching Band Halloween show and trying to convince them to let me play the trombone – I was unsuccessful, 10/30/10
- Alt: Realizing I had a few too many birthday beverages at the Extra Action Marching Band Halloween show when someone later explained to me that they were wearing Christmas costumes (“Hmm . . . those were costumes?”), 10/30/10
- A powerful performance from Boomerang Boomerang – the perfect cap to Samara Halperin’s amazing exhibition, West of the Wonder Wheel at South Exposure, 11/12/10
Related Posts:
From our staff: Random, happy memories of 2010
December 22, 2010
Social Studies, Tuneyards – Rickshaw Stop, May 20
Photo by: Nic Buron
The Shows
This was a great year for shows. You’re lucky this is limited to local stuff, because I could go on and on. Like Field Music at Café du Nord, that was a show. Midlake at Great American took an album that I didn’t – and still don’t -like, and played it brilliantly. How about Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer at Hardly Strictly? This is not a “best of†list — just some I’ll remember.
Mumlers, Growlers, Sonny & The Sunsets, Ferocious Few – Noise Pop; Café du Nord, Feb 26. Noise Pop wasn’t going bold on this bill – just tossing together three of the very best tradition-influenced local groups and the wild card Growlers. So, so fun.
Social Studies, Tuneyards – Rickshaw Stop, May 20. Tuneyards straight up killed this one, backed up by a great band. Social Studies is probably one of the only bands that could have preceded her and left an impression.
Soft Tags – Hemlock Tavern, June 12. These guys are from Portland. Close enough, the way they huddled together and sang their hearts out and played their Flock of Seagulls riffs hearts’ out on the tiny, dark stage at Hemlock.
Still Flyin’, El Guincho – Rickshaw Stop, July 9. The best mishmash set of the year. Still Flyin’ really let it rip and El Guincho’s stripped down approach got the house moving.
Regional Bias: Verdi Club, July 23 – I’m not kissing up to my blog lords – The Bay Bridged’s annual fundraiser was one of the best parties of the year. Vanderslice and Thao, with guests Kacey Johansing and Tuneyards, rocked. But it was the free photo booth, the sandwiches and especially the 80’s soul-rocking DJ’s that made it so special. The SF indie scene’s high school dance.
She’s, Holy Shit, Girls – Fillmore, October 15. The coming out party for junior varsity superstars The She’s, and the coming home party for the road-weary but soul-rested headliners. Gets the good vibes award for the year.
The Albums
I am not up to speed with all the records – there’s tons of local stuff I didn’t even get around to hearing. But these were the ones I liked.
Related Posts:
Mixtape: SF Bay Area Music in 2010 – 50+ songs from this year’s local albums
December 21, 2010
Download Mixtape 1 | Download Mixtape 2
Download Mixtape 3 | Download Mixtape 4
We’ll be doing plenty of “Best of 2010″ retrospectives over the next few weeks, but it seems appropriate to kick off our look back at the past year with a more comprehensive survey of San Francisco Bay Area indie music in 2010. It’s always something of a struggle for us to understand how the Bay Area music scene is viewed by rest of the indie music world. From our vantage point, for every The Dodos, Girls or, most recently, The Morning Benders — all great bands justly receiving national acclaim — there are plenty of less championed gems in the Bay Area universe. This year, blog buzz focused in large part on the worlds of garage, lo-fi, and shoegaze, and SF artists like Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, The Fresh & Onlys, and Weekend were some of the year’s most acclaimed acts. Increased recognition of more Bay Area bands is a great thing, but it would be foolish for outsiders to pigeonhole San Francisco as a lo-fi-only city.
In an effort to serve up an overview of SF rock, folk and electronic pop in 2010, we’ve compiled a four-part mixtape showcasing songs from 58 SF Bay Area bands that released full length albums or EPs (no singles — sorry!) this year. Three and a half hours of local tunes might appear daunting, but that’s part of the point: there are so many talented artists in the Bay that there’s no better way to get a taste of things than to just immerse oneself in the music.
The Bay Bridged 2010 Mix (Part 1 of 4)
The Bay Bridged 2010 Mix (Part 2 of 4)
The Bay Bridged 2010 Mix (Part 3 of 4)
The Bay Bridged 2010 Mix (Part 4 of 4)
One final caveat: obviously, an endeavor like this is going to forget or omit worthy acts we’ve written about this year, most likely due to absentmindedness or an inability to find an mp3 for inclusion by press time. In sum, this list isn’t the definitive guide to everything released by someone with a Bay Area zip code in 2010, just a bunch of really good music by folks in the Bay’s numerous indie micro-scenes. Enjoy!
Tracklistings for all four mix parts below:
Part I
1. The Mantles – “Lily Never Married”
2. Burnt Ones – “Gonna Listen To T Rex (All Night Long)”
3. Grass Widow – “Shadow”
4. Eux Autres – “Go Dancing”
5. Donovan Quinn – “Mom’s House”
6. Sea of Bees – “Marmalade”
7. Kelley Stoltz – “I Remember, You Were Wild”
8. John Vanderslice – “I’ll Never Live Up To You”
9. The Fresh & Onlys – “Be My Hooker”
10. Ty Segall – “Girlfriend”
11. Weekend – “Coma Summer”
12. Hank IV – “Garbage Star”
13. Bare Wires – “I (heart) You Tonite”
14. Girls – “Heartbreaker”
15. Tamaryn – “Love Fade”
16. Royal Baths – “Nikki Don’t”
17. Thee Oh Sees – “I Was Denied”
Related Posts:
Video: Pregnant on Terroreyes.tv
December 20, 2010
Here’s a recent Terroreyes.tv performance by Sacramento’s Pregnant. Daniel Trudeau’s new album, Regional Music, is out now on Life’s Blood Records.
Related Posts:
Sic Alps – “Do You Want To Give $$?”
December 20, 2010
Sic Alps – “Do You Want To Give $$?”
From the band’s upcoming Napa Asylum, out January 25th on Drag City. Sic Alps will be opening for Godspeed You! Black Emperor on 2/21 at Great American Music Hall.
Related Posts:
Happy Friday: Dominant Legs – “About My Girls (Houses Remix)”
December 17, 2010
It’s Friday, why not embark on the adventures of the weekend with a remix? This one comes from Lefse labelmates, Dominant Legs and Chicago’s Houses. Blast it.
Dominant Legs – “About My Girls (Houses Remix)”
