Tuning in to the fan base to finance musical dreams

Kurangan is a Tamil indieband, comprising of Kaber Vasuki and Tenma, that has been crowdfunding its albums for a while and they recently completed their third such project.

“When you depend on sponsors, producers or record labels, their money comes with strings attached. They want title credits, want their brands or themselves to become a part of the video and, quite often, want to decide what type of music we should write. I believe people never know what they want until they see it because people like new and honest content. However, producers only want songs that are in sync with the most popular type of music at any given moment. Besides, even in such records, artistes make most of their money on live performances.

But rarely do they pay for the cost of music production itself.

It isn’t even enough for our daily bread and butter. I personally feel crowdfunding gives an artiste the freedom to create what they really want without being shackled by capitalist demands, because to me music is not a product, but an art,” says Kaber Vasuki, who has also crowdfunded many of his individual tracks.

However, Kaber claims an alternate structure for distribution would work well both for the artiste and the audience. “As a business, if we fail to raise the amount we set to raise for our music, it means people are not interested in our music anymore. So, as long as I can sustain my work through crowdfunding, I know our work is in demand and appreciated, even if only in a limited circle. Many of the people who contribute to our records are fans who are familiar with our work and want more from us. Yet, if we go to a producer, they would be reluctant to invest in us because our music sometimes takes months just to get 1000 views.

But this doesn’t mean people are not interested in our music. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be praising me every time they see me and sharing the songs with their friends.

So, I concluded that it is the distribution system that is broken. It sets a limit on how much someone can pay for our work and is instead based on the number of people who are ready to invest. But we don’t want a 1000 people who will contribute Rs 100 for our song. We want 10 people who are ready to invest 10,000. Crowdfunding allows for such contributions and keeps us connected with our fan base,” he adds.

Tanvi Shah, the first Indian woman to win a Grammy and a frequent collaborator with AR Rahman, has never crowdfunded her own work. However, she says she knows people who have done it before and finds the idea interesting.

“Most of my works are singles rather than albums, so I have never tried the concept with my work. However, if this trend is catching up, then it is great news for the musicians, especially the new entrants. As long as they are ready to keep to their deadlines and create good work, crowdfunding can become a great opportunity for young musicians to launch their work in a more professional manner.

When Shilpa Natarajan started crowdfunding for her indie-record Bubblewrap, she was new to the music arena and wasn’t established enough to find the backing of a record label.

She wanted money to finance her first EP, with five English songs and two Tamil songs.

“When I started out, I found the process overwhelming.

There were so many forms to fill out and so much information to provide! But once I sat down and decided to go for it, it went smooth. However, I’m an early panicker. So, when I received only three per cent of my target amount in three weeks I began to freak out.

I was not a playback singer or a musician whose work people were familiar with.

That’s when I read through experiences of some other independent musicians and how they did it. The success of such campaigns depend largely on how you promote it. You have to invite a lot of people on to the website and rely heavily on the social media hashtag feature. So, over the next couple of weeks, I ended up spamming the e-mail and twitter accounts of everyone I knew.

It worked. I received my target amount, even though there were only 57 contributors,” says Shilpa.

However, she points out that most of her contributors came from outside the country.

“People in India are still reluctant to invest money in art or films or music, as opposed to social causes, if they don’t get some monetary benefits in return.

For example, a personalised CD of the tracks with handwritten thank you notes don’t mean much to them unless they are your friends or friends of your parents.

You will not get support from Chennai people just because you are from Chennai or from musicians because you are producing music. So, apart from the 12 unknown contributors, only five people contributed from India. The others were all NRIs or friends of NRI friends of mine. So, when you crowdfund, you must have this crowd in mind,” she adds.