Committees Choke Creativity
As much as I like crowdfunding, that doesn’t mean creative decisions should all be crowd decided. In this case, the creative decisions are based on popular vote, with little artist input.
I’m all for interesting experiments involving compelling ways to connect with fans and give them a reason to buy, and I love finding out about platforms that enable such things. However, I have to admit that I’m pretty skeptical about the basic concept behind Crowdbands, which not only lets you “fund” an artist, but also vote on the creative decisions they make. The platform does lots of similar (and useful things) that other platforms do: allowing you to support an artist via a “membership fee” of sorts, in exchange for which they get access to the musicians, the artist’s music at no extra charge… and a chance to vote on the creative decisions the artist makes.
