Music Crowd Funding domain name help needed!

As many of you know, we have been working hard on our Music Crowd Funding site for a number of months now.

Well, things are progressing, albeit at a slightly reduced pace.

Now that we are so very nearly ready to go live, we have what is probably the most important question left.

WHAT IS OUR NAME GOING TO BE?

It would be great if you could comment / answer one simple question for us:

Crowd Funding: Imagine you are an aspiring professional musician who is looking to fund a project. What is the best / coolest place to be seen?

1. Musicapella (The Music Propeller)
2. SoundRocket
3. RocketSound
4. FanFired
5. GrooveMint
6. MusicBacker
Comments will close on Sunday 19th May 2013

If you prefer to answer the question via your social media partner, then try one of these;

Or answer our question on Facebook,

https://www.facebook.com/musicbacker/posts/243177202491882

Thank you in advance

What makes a successful music crowd funding campaign?

As we continue to develop our Crowd Funding site for Musicians I thought that I'd do a little more research on what actually makes a successful crowd funding music campaign.

First of all. What is Crowd Funding?
Crowd Funding should not be confused with Equity Funding. 
Equity Funding is where a company raises money from individuals in return for preferred or common stock. The investor, in return, receives a dividend based on the profits of the company.

Music Crowd Funding is where individuals pool their money to support projects initiated by a Musician; in return for "rewards". An example of a reward may include; A thank you note, a CD or music download, T shirts or other merchandise. I've even seen one recent project that will get a song written just for you (if you pledge enough money!)

If you are in any doubt as to the viability of crowd funding, take a look at the profile of Amanda Palmer. Amanda has been on Kickstarter since September 2010. She has created 3 projects. Each of these 3 projects have been successfully funded. 
She has been pledged over $1.3m from nearly 30,000 Backers.

You may not need a £1 million. Maybe you want some much needed studio time to record and produce your new album? Maybe you need some funds for merchandising for an up coming tour? But surely if Amanda can do it you can too?

So let's analyse the following points and see if we can establish some good criteria for creating a successful music crowd funding campaign.

1. Clearly define your project.
2. Research.
3. Carefully work out your rewards.
4. Plan for your successful project. 
5. Write up your project.
6. Be inspiring.
7. Engage with your audience.
8. Don't give up!

First and foremost. If you think crowd funding is an quick option to enable you to raise "easy" funds for your music project. THINK AGAIN!. Now the hard work starts!

1. Clearly define your project

Start making lots of notes about your project. Talk to other members of your band or discuss with your manager and your friends and family. Ask yourself about your goals for the project. Are you aiming to high? Do you have a decent enough fanbase to be able to assist you. The importance of a good fanbase must not be underestimated. Will you be marketing your project on and offline? Do you have a blog? Do you know someone else with a blog that could do a write up for you? It's not too early to think about the successful completion of your project; what rewards will you have in place? How will you communicate with your fans? Remember that your fans and backers are not loaning you money they are receiving a product, a reward, to help you succeed. Often they are receiving that product ahead of the marketplace. So you have something of value. How will you administer the rewards when your campaign is a success?

2. Research.

As more Crowd Funding sites appear, you will find more a plethora of information on the net. Here are a few sites to help you start your research;

• www.MusicBacker.com UK Music Crowd Funding
• www.Indiegogo.com Crowd Funding
• www.Kickstarter.com Creative Projects

3. Carefully work out your rewards.

One of the toughest aspects of crowd funding. What are you going to offer your backers? How will you ensure that your rewards are delivered, on time and within budget. Have you factored in the costs of your payment provider? PayPal, Amazon etc. These fees are normally between 2%  and 7%. These costs will come out of your raised funds. Don't forget the costs of post and packaging. Once your project has been saved and published, rewards are not editable. Remember that it's a contract that you are entering into. Project deadlines are not flexible. Projects last for a set amount of time being; 30, 60 or 90 days. You decide.

4. Plan for your successful project. 

Start with the end in mind.
Imagine that you have successfully completed your project. You have your funds in your bank account. You have increased your fanbase. You have booked the time in the studio. But have you thought about how you are going to give your backers their reward? Have you promised to send them something in the post? How are you going to get everyone's email address? Have you factored in the post and packaging on items? Working with MusicBacker.com you will have all backer's email addresses when you successfully complete your project, so that's one less thing to worry about. You will need to decide on how often to update your backers. Marketing is good. Spam is not!
Don't forget to thank your backers!

5. Write up your Project

Do some research on similar crowd funding projects for musicians. How have they written their opening statement? Have they used video? Upload some of your tunes to your profile. Check to make sure that your crowd funding platform allows music uploads. Use a catchy opening statement. Be bold! Be knowledgeable. You need to make your campaign stand out from the crowd.

6. Be inspiring

Write your project content and bring in your fans so that they feel part of it. Use lots of "...we can do this..." and "...with your support..."

Check the layout and design of your project. Could you enlist a friends help with your graphics or video? Ask people to proof read your project. Silly spelling mistakes at this stage could put people off. Check out other bands and musicians and emulate their success!

7. Engage with your audience.

Your project is now your new baby. You will need to nurture it, cuddle it, gurgle to it and sometimes wipe its bum. You will need to communicate with your backers on milestones achieved, you may need to edit some information, upload new photos and in turn engage with your backers to ensure that they share your project details. Ask them to share your updates. Perhaps you still need a little push to get your funds in time for your project deadline. It may only take one external author or music critic to comment on your project and that'll be enough between making or breaking your project. 

8. Don't give up!

Yes, it will be hard work. Ask yourself; Would you rather go to your bank manager, cap in hand,  who probably knows nothing of the UK Music industry? Perhaps you have a rich uncle or auntie? By uploading your UK Music project to MusicBacker.com you are targeting the very audience that are coming to see you and want to listen to your music.  Increase your fanbase at the same time. 
Start thinking about your next UK Music Project!

My experience of work so far

For nearly fifteen years I have been listening to my Dad talk about his job, running BA Recruitment. 

From an early age, I barely understood what he was talking about, and even now I cannot remember what he was talking about. It wasn’t until I was about nine that I had any idea what he was on about. 

As my Mum was unemployed at the time, this was the only image I had of someone with a job, so much so that I believed that only people in his line of work wore a tie. I realised this wasn’t the case one day in pre-school, when, society being what it is, they wanted us to start thinking about work. They asked us, the unemployed 2-3 year-olds, to bring in something to do with what our parents did for a living so the others could guess what they did, in the spirit of healthy competition. At this point, I was still in the belief that my father was the only person in the world who wore a tie. It ended with one of the teachers having to ‘guess’ what he did as she already knew but meeded to 'play the game'.

However, I will never forget the feeling I had when wearing that tie. It made me feel like I was important, like I was making a difference. It made me feel, in some small way, like I had a job.

I have been told throughout my life that working in an office is depressing and all the best jobs are in the fresh air. I thought I was good with animals. So, for my work experience, I went to a dairy farm. While doing this I made two discoveries.

1. Working in the fresh air is overrated.
2. I am not good with animals.

I’m not physically fit, so there are probably better outside jobs, but working on a farm is not for me. Never mind the long hours, but the heavy lifting and the fact that I didn’t feel alright swinging round a cattle-prod really did it for me.
From here, with only my meagre experience to go on, I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life. I’ve got into sixth form. I’m planning to go to university, but which one, I don’t know. (Oxford please Henry!!) What I’ll do for money when I’m there and what I’ll do afterwards; I have no idea about. I can do chemistry, I can do maths. It’s a start.

This is a guest post by my son Henry Gray. Age 15. Let me point out that he excels in all the sciences and we are all hoping that he’ll do very well whatever his chosen profession is.

Why I think Gangnam Style became so popular

This is a guest post by 15 year old Henry Gray, regarding The Music Industry

Gangnam Style. A Youube sensation by South Korean artist PSY, featuring quirky dance moves. 

Why, you ask, did this become so popular, with over one billion views, when there is so much more talent out there who could have easily done the same thing? I don’t know either. But this is why I think it happened.

• 1.    It was different. Today, where most songs are love-songs, we wanted variety. The original dance moves, tune, rhythm, everything was previously virtually unseen. True, Gangnam Style is a love-song, but we didn’t know that until someone ran the words through a translator, which brings me onto my next point.
• 2.    No-one could understand it. This, as I have already said, made people think the subject matter was more original than it really was. Because it’s really quite hard to replicate the words and timing in another language, and it can’t be sung in English. This means that there are relatively few good covers of it and, if anyone wants to see it done well, they have to watch the original video.
• 3.    Word gets around. Everyone knows one person who shares everything vaguely funny they find on the internet. Gangnam Style was not just put on YouTube, but on other websites people go on to get a good laugh, because of the frankly hilarious music video. Naturally, these sort of people found it, shared it and begun the endless circulation.
• 4.       It inspires competition. This is true. In my experience as a fifteen year old, I have found that Gangnam Style is very much like Marmite. You either love it or you hate it. And it’s people like me, who like it and even write articles on it, that fuel this competition. For example, I have a friend who, if he read this, would probably write one of his own explaining why Gangnam Style should not have become this popular. In a way, this song is very much like art. It inspires conversation, debate even, and there will always be those who like it and those who don’t.

I hope with me writing this it has cleared things up a bit.

Richard III The King in the Car Park

I was a dullard at school, you know?
"Needs to pay more attention"
"Has the potential but doesn't apply himself"
yadyadyada

I've not changed but sometimes I get an interest in something and I become very enthusiastic about it. I'm an Aquarian don't you know?

I was watching Channel 4's program last night about King Richard III and was totally engrossed. Some of my distant learnings came back to me. I remember hearing the story of the two princes in the Tower of London who seemed to disappear, the disfigured King and then I lost interest...

...but last night's program had me hooked so I thought I'd investigate further.

Insert [brief history of Richard III]
...It seems that in August 2012 a team of Leicester University archaeologists thought (not been able to discover why yet) that they would dig up part of a council car park and do what archaeologists do. They discovered buildings related to the church. They quickly found some bones and dug them up under forensic conditions. (They really must have had a GOOD inckling!)

There was a long way to go before anyone could confirm what would be an historically changing event (well, for us Brits anyhow) They had to perform many tests, any one of them could have easily proven that these bones belonged to someone else. Some of the tests included:

• DNA Tests
• Comparing DNA with an existing relative
• Carbon dating tests
• Visual facial reconstruction
• MRI Scan

Well, they completed their tests, built up the face with computer generated software, dated their carbon and compared DNA.

On Monday 4th February 2013 The University of Leicester announced that they had discovered the remains of King Richard III

I say very well done to the team at Leicester University, well done to everyone involved!

I guess that a lot of people will be scribbling away to see if they can get the most recent information included within the school curriculum.

They have found out more about him also.    

• They found that he had a high protein diet made up of meat and fish. Not your common old pleb who ate gruel.
• They found that he did have a curvature of the spine and would probably have been around 5' 8" had it not been for this.
• He is described as having a slender bone structure.
• They have found many different types of wounds, some they are guessing were the fatal blows, some humiliation wounds like the sword wound in his buttocks
• They found out that he looked surprisingly like one of the only paintings of him. There was also the feeling that some parts of the painting had been doctored. Withered finger, raised right shoulder, giving him the "hunch", cruel looking mouth etc

• There was no evidence of a "withered arm"

Some say that he was misunderstood, some say he was a callous murderer. I think he was just very unlucky. He was followed on the throne by the Tudors, Henry the VII followed by #EveryonesFavorite King Henry VIII. The country was certainly changing a lot back in them days.

Leicester is in the East Midlands (my area) of the UK. Whilst I have enjoyed the story and am glad that we have been able to glance back into history using the very latest scientific methods, I wonder what will happen next. There is talk about the remains being sent to York. I think that may steal our thunder a little but can understand if that's what happens.

I do think that the we should use this as an opportunity to advertise the many great things that our area contributes to national and international culture and indeed commerce.

For my part, I own KingInTheCarPark.com and .co.uk domain names. I wonder if they'll bring me a King's Ransom?

The brief history of the humble Piggy Bank

Earthenware has been used for centuries to make make jars, which people sometimes stored money in. These were called ‘pig jars’ for obvious reasons. It wasn't until the 18th century that the term ‘pig bank’ was used.

Possibly the first use of a jar for storing money in came from 2nd century Greece, where jars were made with slits in to stop people stealing the money kept inside them. One discovered recently was box-shaped and had a drawing of a temple carved on the side.
What is thought to be the first pig-shaped money box was the one featured in the picture, a 15th century Javan piggy bank, now featured in the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta.
Now though, piggy banks come in all shapes and sizes, to ones so realistic as to give the impression of a small pig poking its nose out of a blanket, to one where a cat peeks out of a box and slides the money off a pressure pad.

Free job posting on our Network of UK JobBoards

We have extended the free job posting facility on all UK JobBoards to include 2013.

You continue to have a facility to be able to post your job offers completely free of charge on our unique specialised UK JobBoards.

Plans are also available to be able to post your jobs to the JobG8 Network which boasts of having over 4,000 JobBoards with a Network reach per month of 80 million Unique Visitors.

Use our Job Boost to gain maximum exposure for your job by:

• Posting your Job to the Jobg8 Network.

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