Destigmatizing crowdfunding in the arts. It is possible.

Hi. I’m Sean Drinkwater. I play synthesizers and produce records primarily in an independent electronic band called Freezepop. For 10–15 minutes in 2014 I was voted the Number One Keytar Player On Earth on a website where humans vote for things.

I’m writing to you today for a couple of reasons. I hope to discourage people from stigmatizing crowdfunding, as I did for years, and I also hope to draw some more attention to my own Kickstarter, which is in its final couple of days. Gonna be kinda transparent here (because why not?).

I’m the classic curmudgeon in my band, possibly because of age (I’ll be 44 this summer), and possibly because of how we all learned to do things independently in the ’80s and ’90s. There were lessons to be learned from other independent bands and these lessons yielded results. Make a record, cheaply if possible, promote it as well as you possibly could on whatever budget you could scrounge up, and tour the hell out of it. Continue process. Over and over again. Don’t ‘sell out.’ Get management when you’re big enough to need it. In 1990 the idea of your band having music in a commercial for Walmart or whatever would have been completely abhorrent. Crowdfunding has existed for me in that same category. It was something to do if you couldn’t get a label interested. It was not the ‘proper’ way to go about the business of music, whatever the hell that is in 2016.

My band had a great team of people very early on and on basically zero money. Aug Stone got us signed in Europe to Elefant Records, which was a really big deal for us in 2001/2002, and Kasson Crooker, who was the primary creative member of the band for many years, tirelessly promoted the band on the internet, which was a whole new way of working in ‘99. It was a good combination, especially with the people at our own fresh-faced label (started a couple years prior to the band) such as Rick Webb and Tony Norton also getting the word out. We got some shows which were way too big for us at the time, and the illusion that we were a bigger band than we actually were began, an illusion that continued for years.

Enter video games! Freezepop is now known, primarily, as a band with songs in games such as the Guitar Hero games and the Rock Band games (and many music/beat games in general). This was partially due to nepotism (Kasson had begun to work at Harmonix, the game company responsible for many of the early music games), and partially due to having the right couple of songs at the right time. We had a song called “Less Talk More Rokk,” which happened to fit in very nicely with the gameplay in Guitar Hero II, and also happened to be a song which worked really well outside of the game context (while sort of riding the zeitgeist of the music games which peaked in like 2009). It was an actual minor hit, charting on iTunes at like #5 for all of 2008 in the ‘electronic’ category (remind me to fact-check this in a few weeks).

Now, way back in 2002 when the idea of putting songs in games first came up, I pooh-pooh-ed it. I called it selling out, and I thought that it would take away from the records. I didn’t want to be known as a band that would have music in games. This is primarily because I am stupid. It was very difficult in the early ’00s to see where things were headed. The video game stuff afforded us a career, of sorts.

A year and a half ago, when the idea of crowdfunding a record came up, I also voiced objection to this. “Let’s shop the record.” I said, confident that some reasonably intelligent label would get it and want to put the album out and save us a ton of work. We might not see very much cash from it, as such, but it would be handled by people who are more adept at getting records out into the world and promoting them. I was soundly outvoted (come to think of it there never was a vote, and since I have realized in recent years that I am, in fact, stupid, I usually acquiesce to the will of the other band members). I didn’t want to be seen as begging, or as being too pathetic to be signed to a ‘real’ record deal.

Now, I know that we have some fans. We’ve sold a lot of music. We have, reasonably successfully, toured small venues for many years and if we ever stayed out for more than a long weekend we could make okay money doing it. We tend to remain friends by not going out for very long, though. Also, three of the four band members have jobs in design/tech. I am the sole holdout, and really the only person who could go out for more than a few months without making less money than at my day gig(s).

What I didn’t understand was how loyal and incredible our fanbase is. I mean, I did sort of understand that, but we asked a lot of them and they came through in a huge way. Our last full-length was released in 2011 (actually technically 2010 I think) and that is an eternity in the music business. When we sat down to discuss goals we really did not know where to start. Even upon launching I think we all wondered if 30k was going to be difficult/impossible to reach because it had been so long since we made a record. We do a bit of touring every year, but it’s not like we’re hitting every city in the United States twice a year. We haven’t been to Europe in almost ten years because the economy locked up so badly (next Kickstarter?). We have been somewhat out of touch.

We relied on humor to make our initial pitch video, and that seemed more in keeping with the band’s general philosophy than making a straight-up austere/sincere video of us just asking for money to keep the band alive. If you’re an artist, joking around might not be your thing. That’s okay. We also didn’t want to make any threats, but if we hadn’t hit that initial goal, we would be a band that toured its old songs eight days a year and never really made any new music. I certainly wouldn’t be happy in that situation and I think it would have likely only lasted a year or two.

I understand that not every artist/inventor/what-have-you will have the success that we’ve been having on the platform we chose (Kickstarter, which was absolutely correct for us, although there are others and each seems to have strengths). We are somewhat privileged in this sense, although it has been decades of work leading up to this, not ransacking non-existent trust funds. We reached our initial goal in 48 hours and we’re still just completely shocked and overwhelmed by this. I am personally still processing the situation and I’m somewhat emotional about it. We started the band in 1999, and of course one wants some sense of validation that it hasn’t been a complete waste of 17 years. Well, more than the cash (NOT TO DISCOUNT THE CASH) I feel like we got this. It’s inspiring.

What’s also been so lovely to us are all the beautiful comments and stories that people have left on the Kickstarter page. It’s nice to think that we have been a part of these peoples’ lives, especially since the music business is no longer particularly lucrative or a warm and welcoming place. When I’m crawling into the coffin I would love to think ‘hey well that mattered to some people and wasn’t just us dorking around endlessly.’ We do it because we enjoy it, but of course it can’t always be enjoyable. There is a lot of difficult work.

Now, I understand that this is a unique situation. Crowdfunding music, however, does not need to be. It can be done on any scale and people do want to help. I think that I didn’t understand this. Your audience really wants to help, especially if they’ve been with you for a while. I thought we’d be viewed very suspiciously, even by the fanbase. I’m certain we are being viewed suspiciously by some people, as I’ve seen some dumb and pointless comments here and there on social media (fewer than I was expecting, to be honest). I understand where the criticism comes from, but it’s wrong-minded. I was wrong when I attached my stigmas concerning crowdfunding to our own potential campaign. It may not be for everyone, but putting your business into the hands of the people who are your real potential customers can be a really good way to work. The economy is changing, and the ways that people think about goods, services, and wages are also changing. Crowdfunding is not a barter system, exactly, but there is something quite new and progressive about it. If capitalism is dying, there needs to be a way for art to remain a part of peoples’ lives. I feel like this is a start. I didn’t understand it before.

We only have a few days left in our campaign and we would still like to get as much money as we possibly can, of course. The entertainment industries are faltering generally speaking, and it’s more and more difficult to be paid for one’s work. This is going to eat up between 8–9 months of my life, full-time, and our lives, part-time, and I’d like us to be paid. It shouldn’t be a hobby. In August of this year I will have been recording electronic music for 30 years. I wasn’t sure I would be able to make a living from music ever again, but I’ve been proved wrong.

Look for my update in one year, and I’ll let you know how much I’ve completely changed my mind after fulfilling all of these goals/levels. Ha.

Ha?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/freezepopband/freezepops-new-album