Re: [tlug] A Crowdfunding Crash

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2013-08-01 09:34 +0200 (Thu), Josh Glover wrote:

> A good point that the article makes is that funders are not investing
> (as they get no equity), but rather pre-ordering a product and paying
> up front.

Actually, you mis-read that (as did I the first time I read it); the
article quotes Chevalier as seeing it that way, but continues,

    In fact, Kickstarter backers are exchanging something for nothing
    except a pledge.... This isn't investment. It's not even purchasing.
    It's whatever comes before early adopter on the continuum of
    high-risk ways to rid oneself of cash.

Frankly, Kickstarter seems to be working amazingly well, to me. In any
situation where you have a multitude of vendors and customers who have
no real relationship to each other, you're going to have a certain
number of vendors screwing a certain number of customers. The surprise
is not that this happens, but that it doesn't happen more often.

On 2013-08-01 19:17 +0900 (Thu), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> In other words, it's like the way the record companies make the money,
> not the [singers] and guitarists (and definitely not the roadies).

(I assume you really did mean "singers," and not "signers," as in A&R
guys, above.)

Actually, as far as I've seen (I worked in the biz for a few years, and
have friends still in it), the roadies do just fine. They show up for
work, haul speakers and run cables, and get paid a lowish but not unfair
wage for their manual labour. It's just the artists that get screwed,
since they're the ones that end up with complex remuneration contracts
involving to profit and expenses.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson         <cjs@example.com>         +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
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