D.I.Y.

Music On Kickstarter By The Numbers

KickstarterWhile Amanda Palmer’s wildly successful Kickstarter campaign was certainly a strong example of the power of crowdfunding for a musician, one can’t help but wonder just how successful music projects are on Kickstarter across the board. To find out, we looked to Kickstarter’s raw data and metrics that include figures on success rates, dollars pledged, and trends of successfully and unsuccessfully funded projects. As it turns out, music is the most successful category on the platform.

As of this writing, music holds the highest ratio of projects-to-success with 7,432 successful campaigns holding a 54.18% success rate. In terms of dollar amounts, over 5,600 music projects received funding ranging from $1,000 – $9,999 (winning the category for that dollar range).

However, funding is “all-or-nothing in more ways than one,” as Kickstarter says. When it comes to unsuccessfully launched projects, music is in the #2 slot with 6,285 projects not successfully funded, with the majority of music projects receiving 1%-20% of dollars needed – leading that dollar category. It’s important to note, however, that while 13% of all Kickstarter projects finished have never received a single pledge, 82% of projects that raised more than 20% of their goal were successfully funded.

Overall figures for Kickstarter include 61,110 projects to date totaling 264 million “successful” dollars (pledges to successful projects that were collected) earning a 44.02% success rate. Their stats page is updated at least once a day and can be viewed here.

MORELessons Learned From Three Successful Kickstarter Music Campaigns

Hisham Dahud is a Senior Analyst for Hypebot.com. Additionally, he is the head of Business Development for Fame House, LLC and an independent musician. Follow him on Twitter: @HishamDahud

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3 Comments

  1. I may be reading this wrong, but does this mean that music projects are near 50/50 chance of succeeding? Or it might be closer to 60/40, but it seems like Kickstarter might not be the golden ticket musicians have expected.
    I still get the feeling that musicians are looking to Kickstarter to be an income stream instead of a funding platform.

  2. Bands have an inflated/unrealistic sense of how many fans they actually have, so they shoot too high with their funding goal.

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