Daily Newspaper Factual Article

The music industry has had its ups and downs over the years but with piracy being the main culprit in the line up of its major financial turmoil, how is possible for artists and producers to fight back against a foe that could be costing them their future seats in the music industry. One solution that seems to be making an impact recently is that of crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing is the ability for any persons with rights to an intellectual property to be able to sell their product before its manufacture.

This platform also allows for further merchandising on top, such as t-shirts, bags or limited edition diaries that follow the creation of the musical product can be added as bonus items. This allows for packaged expansions that would not be as easily marketed through the standard approach. These aspects all encourage the crowd to fund its creation but with the expected long wait time between purchase and release of said crowdfunded item, the artist can avoid unwise investments into their merchandise before knowing how many will purchase it.

In the most famous cases of successful crowdsourcing, acts with an already large fan base such as Canadian Metal band Protest the Hero and their fourth studio album have found that their fans are loyal and continuing to help them when they need it, raising $341,146 dollars from their expected $125,000. And even though it would appear that only the largest of artists would find success, the crowdsourcing website PledgeMusic have claimed to have a 90% success rate with an average of 140% of the required donations an act requires being made through a public that wants to see and experience the result of their pledges.

In a music industry that’s history consists of performers receiving notoriety from their personal marketability as much as their performances on a large worldwide scale, is the publics direct ability to be given the ability to control success the beginning of the end for major label musical property? On one hand, Since the internets birth the music industry has been adjusted many times over due to the fans newly found ease of access, but on the other the major acts still stand in the 1%, achieving the same notoriety that their predecessors had done thirty or forty years ago. Will this new crowdfunding audience have changed that years down the line or will things continue through the same motions they followed through the 20^th Century?