Zoë Keating Crowdfunds London Concert Using Songkick Detour

(UPDATED) Concert crowdfunding is still inching along for the most part, but a solid step was just taken as Zoë Keating achieved critical mass to book a concert in London using Songkick Detour. This experience may give Keating the tool she's long needed to translate her global audience into gigs in markets where bookers don't know her. And judging from Songkick CEO Ian Hogarth's response, it's an exciting development for Detour.

Concert tracking and alerts service Songkick began crowdfunding concerts last fall with a London show featuring Tycho. Since then they've gone on to initiate a number of gigs including a Latin America tour for Andrew Bird.

More recently they've focused on London as Detour London, partnered with numerous local promoters and used fan pledges to confirm the audience for a variety of bands from Desaparecidos to P.O.D. to Indian Wells.

As Zoë Keating recently discussed in a blog post, she's been planning a trip to Europe and decided to check out Detour to see if it would resolve a dilemma with which she's struggled:

"Digging through my accumulated data (Nielsen Soundscan, zip codes from iTunes and Bandcamp, my mailing list, Facebook insights, Google analytics, etc) I’ve discovered that my listeners are spread all over the globe….but I’m not in direct contact with the vast majority of you.""And because I operate outside the standard music industry, even when my research tells me there are many of you in a particular city, it’s not always easy to for me to convince concert promoters I will have an audience."

She termed it an "experiment" and Songkick artist ambassador Brooke Parrott, in a post appearing today on the Songkick Blog, reports back from the lab:

"Since the dawn of Songkick Detour, I’ve thought of Zoë Keating as the perfect candidate for a fan-funded concert — a forward thinking artist with the freedom and impetus to operate outside the traditional music industry, with wildly passionate fans to boot. And that is the winning combination."

"As it turns out, her fans thought the same thing. We’re thrilled to announce that Zoë will be playing a very special Detour London show in June.""Earlier this year, UK fans of Zoë Keating had already started galvanizing support for her on the Detour London platform with around 20 pledged tickets. When Zoë heard about the fan excitement on Detour and got involved, the pledges shot through the roof, catapulting her to #2 on the Detour London leaderboard with over 130 committed fans – before a show had been announced."

CEO Ian Hogarth also said in an email that the initial response is plenty to confirm her suitability for numerous venues and that their booking partners will take it from there.

It looks like a win for Detour London as they iterate their way forward and for Zoë Keating in her quest for a solution to the problem of "how to tour intelligently."

Disclosure: Zoe Keating is an agency client of Hypebot's sister company Skyline Music.

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Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact:

clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com

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