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Comment by freshbreakfast | Hacker News Reader

I personally hate anything that "feels" like charity to the artist, I don't think that's sustainable. Even though I call this theoretical model "crowd patronage", I feel it would only work if the fan "feels" like he's getting more than some altruistic warm feelings of supporting something. They should also feel the real value of relationship access. Just the illusion of having a closer relationship to artist will only enhance the feeling of supporting the artist. But at a minimum, there must be that value back of some sort of relationship reciprocation. Does that make sense?

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Without subsidy crowd patronage will tend towards normal patronage as it exists in the classical arts (we still have patrons commissioning paintings and sculptures, for example). Pure patronage ignores consumer demand for music. Leaving money on the table deprives the artistic community potential income, which limits its size, as well as creates an opening for a competing, consumer-centric model to re-appear. I'm trying to find a way to merge those two sources of revenues (consumer demand and patronage).

Moving towards music distributors being required, as part of the licence, to divert a portion of revenues to matching patronage to artists would be an alternative. That way, person A, who would have supported one project for $100 000 can now support two, with $50 000 each of matching funds (assuming 1:1 matching) making up the other half. The distributors could also dis-intermediate the patrons, the difference between this model and the labels being that the artist would have the freedom to distribute their music for free as well.

Note that an un-intended consequence of this would be music losing mass appeal and catering to the tastes of the patron minority. Given the state of popular music I'm not sure if this would be a terrible loss :P.

I agree with nancyhua. I sort of use "patronage" as short hand, don't let it confuse you. I think to the fan, they must not feel like it's pure patronage... they should get some sort of concrete interaction or recognition back from artist. There should be real value there for fan for this to sustain as a model.

That's not short hand at all - patrons of the arts, going back to antiquity, generally got a private performance of the work they commissioned in addition to the opportunity to fraternise with the artist. They typically also branded themselves onto the work somehow.

My argument is there aren't enough dollars seeking that experience today as there are consumption dollars (which the industry has gotten used to). In the past, monetising that long tail of demand was prohibitive. Today it is not. As a single example, I would never contribute to support a musician yet my lifetime worth to the music industry is at least tens of thousands of dollars (including concert tickets).

There is enough money in that delta to fund the artists, lobby legislators, and enforce the status quo. That's the problem. If you aren't re-routing that demand you're proposing a nice but idealistic hypothetical.

I think they try to do this to some extent with "perks." As a crowdfunder and crowdfundraiser, I can see a divide between people who donate bc they want emotional pleasure and people who donate bc they want to receive something. It should be possible to segment patrons to address different donors' desires. Maybe if you're a music patron seeking stuff, you get options to buy particular tickets/seats or are the first to get songs or limited editions or something. If you're seeking status maybe they put your name somewhere on their website or send you a special Facebook logo, etc.

I thought that the patronage model could partly be a bit like a subscription fan club, with various perks and deals on gigs and limited artifacts and streamed studio access and other stuff like that.

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