When Kickstarter Doesn't Work

Crowdfunding campaigns are sometimes considered an almost can't-miss way to raise money for a project, but that's often far from the case. Even though slightly over 50% of music projects do get fully funded, there have been some high profile failures (think Public Enemy) recently.

The latest is Bjork's Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the development of a new version of her Biophilia album app, this time for Android and Windows 8. The campaign was cancelled just 10 days in when it reached just 4% of it's goal of 375,000 pounds (about $580,000US).

The original Biophilia iPad app offered interactive modules for each song on Bjork's Biophilia album, which included games, animation and the ability to remix songs. Porting it to both Windows and Android platforms was a way to get it into more low income households in the interest of music education, according to the site.

When it comes to crowdfunding campaigns, there are 3 main impediments to funding:

1. Is the project sexy? Porting an app from iOS to Windows and Android just doesn't grab the imagination somehow. iOS owns the market (at least for now), and a great number of potential donators are Apple fanboys, so the basic premise was never going to work.

2. The reward tiers. There just wasn't anything sexy with the Biophilia app award tiers either. Art prints of the app graphics from a B list artist won't cut it, no matter how cool they might be (and they are very cool).

3. The monetary goal. Let's face it, the lower the amount of money you're trying to raise, the more likely you'll achieve it. While I don't for a second think that the amount Bjork was trying to raise was out of line with its needs, it was just too big a chunk to bite off. Bjork isn't successful enough as an artist to pull a campaign like this off.

For those of you who intend to create a crowdfunding campaign in the future, use this as a template of what not to do.

Here's the promo video for the project.

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Square Expands It's Features

Square has been mentioned on this blog many times before and with good reason. It's a disruptive force in the financial business and a boon to concert merchandisers everywhere. If you're not yet familiar with Square, it's a way of doing financial transactions (like accepting credit cards) without using a traditional bank and paying their transaction fees. Square provides you with a credit card reader that attaches to your iPhone or iPad which makes these transactions a snap, especially on the road.

The Square card reader is already available at Apple stores, Wal-mark, Best Buy, Radio Shack and Target, and soon at OfficeMax and UPS stores, for only $9.99, but each purchaser can redeem a $10 credit to their bank account, so it really costs you nothing. Over a million merchants already use Square, which is impressive because there are only 8 million merchants that accept credit cards in the United States in the first place.

This year Square is rolling out new features like adding in-depth merchant analytics to its iPad experience, allowing merchants to access information about which inventory is selling well, and what they can do to help make more money. Square is also trying to upgrade the experience of running a business on just an iPad with their new iPad app Square Register, which is designed to be a point of sale replacement for cash registers and terminals.

While all that's cool for artists and bands trying to make a buck out there on the road, a new feature might be even better for consumers. Card Case, which is a virtual wallet that consumers fill with the info of all the merchants they visit and buy from who accept Square. These mobile cards include locations, merchant contact info, coupons, order and purchase history and more. Users can also use Card Case to ‘pay with their name’ and even enable hands-free payments. That means that the purchasing experience is easier than ever, which is something that everyone likes.

So if you're about to do some shows and want to sell some merch, check out Square. It's a service that you can't do without.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Is This iPad App The 21st Century Album?

There have been a lot of attempts to build a new digital album format that properly represents what people might want today, with very little excitement or penetration so far. Now EMI (of all companies) seems to be on the right track with a new iPad app version of Swedish house producer super group Swedish House Mafia’s ‘Until One’.  The product is actually an app version of the trio’s book and album combined with additional features layered on top (see screen shots below). The features include:

  * 9 tracks from the album

  * All of the photos from the book

  * Live and behind the scenes footage

  * Interviews

  * Social feeds

  * Dynamically updated news content

The app/album costs $9.99 and is available at the iTunes App Store.

This is very cool because it's thinking outside the box, but it's really not that far out. It's more of a natural extension of what the album can be. I see it as the wave of the future.

Here's a look at what the app can do.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.