Crowdfunding can be beautiful

I’ve seen some inter­est­ing kick­starter-style cam­paigns; it’s always nice to see what kinds of good­ies some­one will come up with to enroll peo­ple in their projects. These kinds of pre-fund­ing dri­ves are an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get peo­ple excit­ed about a project and put on dis­play one’s pas­sion. A dry invest­ment prospec­tus might get the big back­ing, but one real­ly has to have a com­pelling and acces­si­ble idea in order to get a lot of peo­ple to throw in $10 or $20.

I enjoyed think­ing about pledg­ing to Sky­Cube and won­der­ing what kinds of pho­tographs I could get from low orbit for $20. That was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to direct­ly ben­e­fit from the project at a pret­ty low entry point.

The more expen­sive lev­els had some good things too, like a SpaceX Fal­con 9 mod­el rock­et but the cool­ness of hav­ing a $30 mod­el rock­et kit did­n’t real­ly bring $600 worth of val­ue — not the way that $20 seems like a bar­gain for the chance to take a few snap­shots from space. I know the point of the swag is to give a lit­tle thanks for sup­port­ing the project; you would­n’t put $600 into a project like that just for the swag.

But this one real­ly impressed me. Niyaz is one of my favorite musi­cal groups. Azam Ali is a down­right phe­nom­e­nal vocal­ist (though I should not neglect to praise her for her ham­mer dul­cimer play­ing;) Loga Ramin Torkian a mas­ter­ful instru­men­tal­ist with a wide range of instru­ments includ­ing those of his own design. Car­men Riz­zo has retired from the group but as a pro­duc­er and pro­gram­mer was crit­i­cal to form­ing the sound, and there are too many awe­some col­lab­o­ra­tors who have worked with the band at var­i­ous points to list here. Niyaz’s bridg­ing of cul­tures goes far beyond what usu­al­ly pass­es for «world music» or oth­er kinds of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion fusion music. It’s one thing to incor­po­rate ele­ments of anoth­er cul­ture’s tra­di­tions into one’s music; it’s quite anoth­er to be authen­ti­cal­ly and deeply part of mul­ti­ple cul­tures and to bring those tra­di­tions — and inno­va­tions — togeth­er. Niyaz is the rare exem­plar of the latter.

For their upcom­ing album The Fourth Light Niyaz has start­ed a Pledge­mu­sic cam­paign to raise funds for the launch of the album and tour. The range of pledge lev­els is quite broad, espe­cial­ly for an album launch. So too is the range of offer­ings in return for pledges.

Of course, the offer­ings start out with typ­i­cal fare: pre-release-date down­loads, copies of the CD with or with­out sig­na­tures, t‑shirts, t‑shirt-and-CD com­bi­na­tion pack­ages and so on. But then they get cre­ative and offer things which I’ve nev­er seen musi­cal artists offer before; unique items which would have real val­ue to a lover of their music. Examples:

• Hand­writ­ten and signed lyric sheet, in Eng­lish or Far­si ($50, this one is tempting!)
• Cus­tom made essen­tial oil per­fume ($85)
• Pri­vate music les­son via Skype ($200)
• Hand-paint­ed frame drum ($600)
• Laf­ta (Turk­ish instru­ment sim­i­lar to an oud) from Loga’s col­lec­tion ($650)
• Pri­vate con­cert any­where in the US or Cana­da ($15,000)

There are of course oth­er offer­ings, but this is illus­tra­tive of the kind of thought­ful imag­i­na­tion that went in to the cam­paign. These are things you could­n’t get any­where else. Things you might not care about unless you are a lover of the music. The offer­ings are per­son­al, mean­ing­ful, engaging.

It’s grat­i­fy­ing to see this kind of atten­tion and care put in to the cam­paign. The cre­ativ­i­ty of the artists shines through, and even as they are ask­ing for sup­port they are offer­ing val­ue. The band isn’t going beg­ging; this is a smart and vital mar­ket­ing. Not mar­ket­ing in the sense of manip­u­la­tion, but true mar­ket­ing. It’s the busi­ness of cre­ative pro­duc­tiv­i­ty where those terms are not mutu­al­ly exclusive.

Too often «busi­ness» is used to describe a kind of cut­throat divorce of human val­ue from the pur­suit of wealth. Too often the word is described by the peo­ple who oper­ate in that way. That’s not what mar­kets are sup­posed to be, and that’s not what mar­ket­ing is sup­posed to be. Free asso­ci­a­tion and vol­un­tary trade means peo­ple get to use their eco­nom­ic pow­er — what­ev­er means they have — to get the things that they val­ue in pro­por­tion to how much they val­ue those things, and pro­vide reward to the peo­ple who cre­ate what oth­ers val­ue. Sad­ly, cre­ative peo­ple often avoid busi­ness, hav­ing had the word taint­ed by com­mon usage.

This is a digres­sion though. I’m not writ­ing to get on a soap­box about open mar­kets or free trade. I’m writ­ing to express my appre­ci­a­tion for a cam­paign to sup­port a cre­ative project that I’m look­ing for­ward to. I’ll be pre-order­ing the CD at the least, and I’m con­sid­er­ing adding some­thing extra. If I get that some­thing extra, I’ll be glad to help the project but also glad about what I’ll receive in return.