Hey Jay, Back when HaveMoneyWillVlog.com was started, I involved myself in that project while concurrently evangelizing the concept of "Crowdfunding" and building a prototype for the videoblog community called fundavlog (now defunct). While HMWV was a tight advocacy based system to help fund videobloggers, fundavlog was an open community to showcase videoblog projects the creators behind them and provide simple ways to fund them. It was largely dependent on Trust and the ideas behind Reciprocity. The point was simply to expose good content and let the viewers send money to those involved in creating that content. No middle-man except a small core volunteer team to manage the site and the transactions (oversight and optional handling). No costs were involved so the strategy did not involve scraping percentages from each "donation".
I guess I lost some faith in this along the way.... probably because so much attention was being put on traditional revenue systems via advertising models and maybe the idea of Crowdfunding as a viable alternative was over-zealous. Or maybe time will tell. There have obviously been many success cases, some of which are logged on the Crowdfunding wiki that Mike Meiser and I put together (was removed from wikipedia). http://crowdfunding.pbwiki.com/ It all comes down to the most appreciative of the audience.... and if they are willing to toss in a few bucks now and then for being regular consumers of your content. It takes a certain kind of person to voluntarily send someone money for the otherwise free works that you are putting out there. My hope is that eventually, this certain kind of person will become very common. HMWV showed me that this is possible. You could also look at the porn industry, both past and present, for examples on how they handle these things. Sure, there is a high-demand for porn which fuels their successes, but content aside, there have been innovative approaches takken over the years.... some sketchy, some legit. Some traditional, Some Progressive. I do believe that the music industry will largely be transformed even more than it has already been..... and continue to be... as we move into the future. And Artist/Fan Relationships are at the core of that. Still, there is value and power in agencies that can take you to "the next level" and that will always be enticing..... but if the long-term math doesnt work... and you should be able to figure that out.... and if your fan base is depp and strong... then logical decisions will come from that and those will start to more often be strategies of the independent kind.... with little or no middle-man component. For Net Video Productions..... Same can apply. But I'd say that you cannot directly compare music and video. There are and will be video "rockstars", but both the consumers and type of content will be too different to assume anything between the two and how things are evolving, culturally and financially. HMWV was important because the projects were deemed important.... and worthy of financial support from the community. But how often do net video shows fall into this category of important media? media worth funding.... media that needs to exist and propagate.... media that can help change things or media that can entertain us more than what is available in other traditional outlets? media that people are willing to pay for, even though they may not have to in order to consume it? So, it's important to balance the need for advertising and sponsorships together with the willingness of the crowd to tip you for a job well done. Sull On 9/25/07, Jay dedman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I just read this good blog post: > > http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070923-barrier-bustin-internet-may-lead-to-a-music-industry-middle-class.html > > The premise is that there is a burgeoning class of musicians are > forming direct relationships with their fans. This cuts out the > agency middle men...and all the high costs of promotion. Independent > musicians can then hope to make a living by selling their own music > and doing live performances. > > Reading the article, I wonder if you could apply the same logic to > online video. Do independent video makers need to rely on advertising > models....continuing the same relationship to a bloated middle man? Or > will a different relationship develop between people watching and the > people who make the stuff they want to watch? > > jay > > -- > http://jaydedman.com > 917 371 6790 > Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/2aodyc > RSS: http://tinyurl.com/yqgdt9 > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
