For ulterior reasons I ended-up on the Pledge Me ‘crowd funding’ site.
Amongst the “please give me” pages
I then stumbled on-to one from the local band Von Voin Strum.
Bands and charity have always
equated to the same thing in New Zealand, just ask any musician.
VVS were chasing $4000 from their
fan base to record an album and assist tour-costs to Australia.
So how did they get on?
Well in short time they
reached the total with a few incentives like exclusive copies of the release,
t-shirts and even drum lessons.
The average ‘give’ was $80.
Intrigued I searched further
amongst the musical genre and came across one from Proud Scum of all bands.
Proud Scum were after $2000
to get the songs they played at the AK79 reunion concert, I was at,
immortalised on to CD.
Pleasingly they too were successful
in reaching their goal thanks to 21 pledgers.
Also amongst the other Pledge
Me success stories were Dunedin bands TLA and Black Sky Hustler who are heading
around the South Island thanks to a grand from fans.
Seventy per cent of the
musical projects on Pledge Me meet with success, far higher than I thought
would be the case.
The Wellington International
Ukulele Orchestra raised a not inconsiderable $9K for their trip to Scotland,
yes Scotland.
The 176 pledgers for Daniel
McBride’s solo project Sheep, Dog & Wolf came up with $8k to send the teen
to Germany.
Girl on Girl Action, Astro
Empire, Phantom Empire , Mangle and Gruff
etc attracted monies to record albums.
Christchurch band Ashei left
tax-payers untarnished by getting $1,700 from supporters for their video.
It’s refreshing seeing so
many local bands getting support from their fans, families, friend from the pub,
work mates etc.
Given its anecdotal success I’m
confident more bands will employ this funding avenue.
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