KickStart an Album (Creativity is a Process)

KickStarter is a funding platform website thing for artists, designers, musicians, filmmakers and other creative types to fund specific creative projects. It's not an investment vehicle, you don't get to own a share of whatever is made. Instead, the creators offer special incentives to donate money to their cause in a way that leverages their talents and helps them progress their project.

An example, by way of illustration.

My mate Allison Weiss is a singer songwriter who is crowdsourcing the funding for her album using KickStarter.

She's a very charming young citizen of the internet who is carving out a music career without any involvement from record labels.

She creates her own videos - she trained as a graphic designer - and uses Tumblr and Twitter to share her life with her fans.

Because she has a direct relationship with people that she has developed online, she has thus far raised $6000 to record an album.

And if you donate, depending on your donation level, she will create specific things for you.  Pledges of $50 get a name check in the sleeve notes, $500 will get you your own song.

Billboard recently picked up on what Allison was up to - and if you donate now [the deadline is the 1st August] she may hit her new target before the final countdown.

One of the very disruptive things the Internet does to the media business is radically disrupt the economics of content.

The hit-driven portfolio investment economics can be supplanted by the engagement audience collaboration model espoused by artists like Allison, who nurture their fan base, creating genuine relationships with people, who are then willing nay happy to fund her creative endeavors.

But another awesome thing it does is expose the fact the creative things are not really things. Especially with a digital creative thing, it is perhaps better thought of as a process.

Imogen Heap is another artist using Twitter to open up the process of recording an album to her fans, bringing them into the process, seeking their input on the process, giving them collaborative ownership of the process.

[Wired Magazine referred to this as 'Tapping the Hive Mind' in the most recent issue, which brings all kind of weird images to my mind.]

The process is, in itself, interesting. And that process has gaps, that allow people to include themselves into it in different ways, something I've previously suggest might be a good model for certain kinds of advertising.

The viewing audience likes things, the doing audience likes processes.