Boards
sellaband
anyone come across this yet?
http://www.sellaband.com/
noticed something about it in the ft this morning, heres an overview:
bands can upload 3 tracks and users can download the music for nothing, but are encouraged to buy shares in the band at $10 each with the funds going towards a target budget of $50,000 for the professional recording of an album which is then made available for free downloading by consumers...
2,500 shares have been sold already with one dutch band having $9,500 to its name already but backers can withdraw their investment at any time to transfer it to another artist until the $50,000 is reached.
Artists, investors and the website share in sponsorship revenue and once bands reach the target amount of money each backer receives a copy of the album and the artist will get 50% of album profits from physical & online sales with the other 50% going to investors.
so would any of you put your money where your mouth is and invest in your favourite band through this? If so how much money would you invest?
Personally I don't have money to burn and would rather spend the money on going to see the band and buy merch or whatever from them but it'll be interesting to see whether the model actually works and how many bands can get to the point of recording albums, and then whether people will actually get any reasonable sort of return for their money (but i guess thats hardly the motivating factor).