Allison Weiss - DIY Musician

Or how to bypass the record labels and still succeed

All over the world, a quiet revolution is taking place… Young artists – technology- and net-savvy – are doing it for themselves because they have little choice; the investment isn’t there like it used to be.

Brian Message, chairman of MMF (the Music Managers Forum), as reported in the Guardian on a new breed of musicians who are completely bypassing the record labels.

The success of a “fan-funded” model was demonstrated earlier this week when Allison Weiss, (this great little self-publishing singer/songwriter from Athens, Georgia), asked her fans on Twitter to help raise the money to press the first 1000 copies of her new EP. In return for pledging money upfront, fans would get thanks on the album cover, exclusive tracks, a digital copy of the album a week before its release… And so on depending on how much they pledged.

So successful was the fundraising that Allison reached her goal of $2,000 in 10 hours and passed the $3,000 mark in two days prompting her to make a full album instead. The deadline is August 1, and she’s still accepting funds.

The music industry has already been through one revolution, as sales moved from physical CD products to digital downloads. Now that selling music online has been legitimised, this is the next step; self-publishing by both new and established artists, after all variant of the internet fan-funded model saw Obama raise record donations in his Presidential race, and I see no reason more artists in other genres won’t turn to this method to fund future projects.