Some Pledge Music Artists Having Trouble Collecting

As if being an artist isn’t hard enough already. Imagine that you go to the trouble of designing and marketing your crowdfunding campaign, and through your hard work it successfully reaches its goal or beyond. Then you find that you can’t get your hands on the funds in order to fulfill your promised product to your donors. That seems to be the case with Pledge Music these days, as multiple reports site problems getting paid.

Hypbot noted back in June that artists were having trouble collecting from Pledge music after their campaigns completed. The artist’s were paid, but in many cases months late. The amounts owed were in the low to mid 5 figure range.

The blog posted again in September that even more artists were having difficulty being paid. Many artists received only partial payments months after they were scheduled. Of course, even if the full payment is made, the artists face diminished good will with their fans for delivering late on the premiums promised on the donation tier, not something that anyone wants to contend with.

Then yesterday industry pundit Bob Leftsetz posted that the manager of the band Fastball called to complain about the band being owed $20,000 and getting the runaround when trying to collect.

As said before, crowdfunding is hard enough without having to worry about seeing the money at the end of a successful campaign. It’s not easy to market a campaign, as you have to not only be able to reach out to your fans, but also design the reward tiers so they’re attractive enough to get a fan to invest.

There are many crowdfunding sites available, and most have no problem paying. Pledge is one of the few that’s dedicated to music however, and that’s what makes it attractive to artists trying to fund their next project. Let’s hope that the ones that trusted the platform will see the fruits of their labors soon.