Crowdfunding Websites, Digital Patronage and Artist-Fan Interactivity

‘Crowdfunding Websites, Digital Patronage and Artist-Fan Interactivity’

Abstract: This paper places recent online crowdfunding practices in the wider context of music composition, revenue generation and patronage throughout history. I will use the jazz orchestra composer Maria Schneider (on ArtistShare), canonical hip-hop group Public Enemy (on Sellaband) and singer-songwriter Amanda F. Palmer (on Kickstarter) as case studies of digital patronage. These online projects are reflective of and have important implications for their respective genre cultures and their ideologies. The case studies also raise important questions surrounding new conditions of the digital music industry, artist/fan interactivity and the internet in facilitating spaces for musical creativity and communication.

Justin Williams is Lecturer in Music at the University of Bristol. He completed a PhD on hip-hop from The University of Nottingham under the supervision of Adam Krims. He has taught at Leeds College of Music, Lancaster University and Anglia Ruskin University, and has been published in Popular Music, Popular Music History and The Journal of Musicology. His book on musical borrowing and intertextuality in hip-hop music is set to be published in June 2013 by University of Michigan Press for the ‘Tracking Pop’ series (eds. John Covach, Lori Burns and Albin Zak).