D.I.Y.

CASSETTE: A Documentary In Final Days Of Kickstarter Campaign

Cassette-posseA Kickstarter campaign for a documentary about the cassette subculture received a variety of coverage in late 2011 and is now back in the news as they countdown to its last day on Saturday. A variety of blogs are spreading the word that the makers of CASSETTE: A Documentary needs your support to meet their campaign goal of $25,000. If you want to help spread the word about the cassette revival with documentary evidence or just think it sounds like a cool idea, now's your opportunity to help out.

Though skeptics rely on discredited sources such as SoundScan to attack the very notion of a cassette revival, this revival has been widely-documented in both mass media and the indie press. The Wall Street Journal has covered it and established acts like Dinosaur Jr. are getting in on the action with releases on small cassette labels.

Trailer for CASSETTE: A Documentary

Now filmmakers Zack Taylor and Seth Smooth want to take a deeper look at the cassette phenomenon with CASSETTE: A Documentary. They are currently trying to raise $25,000 on Kickstarter and, as of early Thursday morning, have only received pledges of a bit less than $10,000.

Though this does raise the question of the wisdom of using a crowdfunding platform that only pays out if you meet your goal, rather than taking IndieGoGo's more realistic approach of passing on funds regardless of whether or not a specific window for fundraising is met, it would be great if people came through in the final hours with outsize support.

The filmmakers want to take a global look at the movement in historical perspective:

"Help us celebrate the A Side, the B Side, the mixtape, and the whole of cassette culture by supporting Cassette: A Documentary. We'll look at all parts of popular culture influenced by the cassette, including hip-hop and B-Boy culture, indie rock, home recording, and beyond."

"We've already conducted a number of interviews in the UK, and with your support we'll be able to speak to manufacturers, musicians, and historians around the world. Along the way, we'll stop in Zimbabwe to cover the recent boom in cassette culture there."

Beyond the campaign, you can keep up with the progress of CASSETTE on their blog.

Cassette Pic via Cassette Generator.

Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith maintains his freelance writing hub at Flux Research and music industry resources at Music Biz Blogs. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

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3 Comments

  1. WHAT? “Though this does raise the question of the wisdom of using a crowdfunding platform that only pays out if you meet your goal, rather than taking IndieGoGo’s more realistic approach of passing on funds regardless of whether or not a specific window for fundraising is met…”
    This all-or-nothing approach is gold for Kickstarter. It allows fans or potential fans to feel the urgency of donating. With a site like IndieGoGo, there isn’t this same constraint, which results in apathy or forgetfulness. It’s unfortunate if a project doesn’t meet its goal and doesn’t get funded, but projects in general greatly benefit from this all-or-nothing style of crowdfunding.

  2. Do you have any evidence to back that up?
    I understand the logic. It’s compelling but often such claims don’t actually hold up.
    If this project hadn’t gotten a bunch of blog posts and coverage in the final hours, would they have gotten the money? How do you know either way?
    Given that most people can’t even read a complete paragraph online and tell you what they read, I just don’t know if that’s true or not. Is having a deadline enough or does it have to be an all-or-nothing deadline?
    And how do you know?

  3. By the way, I’m in no way trying to bait you here. I honestly wonder if the intuitive logic of your assumption, which I also feel to some degree, is actually correct.
    I would love to see some kind of credible study done of that topic.

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