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Ben Folds on fan funding and a nicer music industry
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 24 May 2012
As fan funding (or the ‘pre-order project funding system’ if you prefer) comes of age, at least for established artists with existing fan bases, Ben Folds, who is funding the previously reported Ben Folds Five comeback album via PledgeMusic, has been talking about the system to Forbes.
Asked about going the crowdsourcing route (yes, I now have three names for the same thing) Folds told the magazine: “Some [artists] will find that it’s a better way. Others will find the traditional route is better. Some people may go on the fucking Home Shopping Network, who knows? [But fan funding is] going to favour whoever can manage to engage the biggest audience on their own. Those will be the people who benefit the most from it. And the ones who know how to do things cheaply, because even if you raised a million dollars, if you spent a million a half, it’s just like the record companies, it doesn’t benefit you at all”.
He continued: “I think someone has to have a little bit of a head start before they Kickstart. But that’s always been the way in the music business. If you went down the laws of the things you know to be true about the music business, you’ll see that nothing is really changing. If you’re going to do well on Kickstarter or PledgeMusic, you have to have a leg up. You probably got your leg up by doing it yourself and getting out and playing gigs”.
Though some things have changed about the music industry in the post-Napster age, Folds admits, noting that, as the business has downsized and become less rich, it’s mainly the bastards who have been eased out. He says: “Right now, [the music industry is] just in a little chaos. Things are re-settling and re-shifting and people are trying stuff, people are getting laid off. Fewer records are being sold every day. The people left in the business are, I think, the best, the people who were there because they cared and have new ideas. Everyone else is gone”.
Continuing in this realistic but upbeat mood, he concludes: “We’ll sell fewer records and it’ll be okay. I think that there were so many things that for so long were so corrupt and inefficient in the music business that there’s a lot to improve and what you’re seeing now is another part of the growing pains, of the rebellion”.
Read the full Forbes interview here.
