An Open Letter

An open letter to Indiegogo.com:

About two years ago my band started pre-production on our second LP. We had no overhead to pay for professional services but still wanted to do things the best way possible. Our first LP was done all on our own. We recorded, mixed, mastered, copied and distributed it all by hand so we know what goes into every aspect of making a good product. We had secured a fairly well known musician to help produce the album and had already tracked a majority of the songs. That being said we decided to contact a funding site to help pay for post-production and manufacturing costs. PledgeMusic were the first to come to our attention. We set our page up with rewards and budgeted out a reasonable goal applied for the ‘go ahead’ and got turned down. We got responses along the lines of: “(your music) sounds great!” but “your social networks are a little low…” “Solid support on your Facebook Band Page is really a must” as well as telling us we didn’t have enough Twitter followers to even be considered by the site. The e-mail was riddled with links of sites to help “address (our) fan base growth and gain momentum”. It was all kind of a downer really because we heard about the site in a fairly grassroots manner and were looking forward to all the possibilities. Now we’ve never been in-your-face, shameless self-promoters by nature. In fact, we’re not impressed by artists who pummel there fanbase (or anyone else for that matter) into visiting, liking, or paying for something they aren’t interested in. This includes the “pay to play” mentality where an artist pays for opportunities, hits, streams and thousands of pawned fans. Regardless, we went ahead and funded the rest of the project out of our own pocket and were able to double our fanbase by the end of the next year. What did all of this prove? Well, 1) That we didn’t need anything to prove ourselves and that we were passionate enough to still get things done and 2) That some sites like these are a bit hypocritical when it comes to what they set out to do. If you’re trying to help independent artists, musicians and the likes reach their goals then why would you shut them out for not having enough of something to begin with? Isn’t that the point, to get there? So what we saw were a lot of musicians who had numbers attached to them that got the green light because ‘they had something to show for it’. As most musicians know, bands fall apart, careers change and you’re not always in the same band you started in so you start over. But when you’re excluded from a company who’s idea is based on the “help your favourite artists make and release their records” route then what’s that say about the company? Some of my favorite bands don’t even have social networking sites.

We’re kicking off the last 30 days of our campaign tomorrow and whether we reach goal or not I’ll at least know our project has worth, potential and that no one should give up confidence when their numbers are “a little low”. I’d like to say thanks to Indiegogo.com for giving us the opportunity to fund our third album without all the grief that is irrelevant anyway.

All the best,

Ian
Musician at The Velvet Ants and
Founder of Zeptune Records