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Island Records launches crowdfunding site with Indiegogo

By | Published on Thursday 6 February 2014

Fan Republic

Island Records has announced an interesting alliance with crowdsourcing service Indiegogo, which will see the launch of a new music-based fan-funding operation called Fan Republic. The platform will also double-up as a talent scouting tool for the A&R team at the Universal Music division.

And whereas Pledge, now the primary fan-funding platform in the music community, generally refers to itself these days as a direct-to-fan service, with expertise in premium-product pre-order-based campaigns, Fan Republic will seemingly proudly wave the ‘crowdfunding’ flag. Certainly those are the words in the opening line at www.fanrepublic.co.uk, which taps into the new Indiegogo Outpost platform, which allows Indiegogo-enabled campaigns to actually be hosted on third party sites.

Artists will be encouraged to crowdsource funding for upcoming projects, akin to Pledge and Kickstarter, with the extra treats of deals and discounts for Fan Republic users to help with the recording and touring process, and the promise that Island’s A&R team will check out every artist who reaches their fan-funding targets. The set-up also claims to have the lowest admin costs of any music-based crowdsourcing operation at 4%.

Announcing the new venture, Island chief Darcus Beese told CMU: “A&R is the life blood of Island Records and we also have a great track record of innovation in the digital space. There are many ways for artists to take the first steps in their careers and the crowdfunding route is increasingly one of them. Fan Republic shows our commitment to finding and nurturing great new talent, alongside our partners Indiegogo through their globally respected crowdfunding platform”.

Meanwhile the label’s digital man Glenn Cooper added: “We are very excited about the launch of the Fan Republic partnership with Indiegogo. Crowdfunding is an important part of the digital marketing plot for many emerging artists and a great way to build a mutually beneficial relationship with their most engaged fans”.

And Indiegogo boss Slava Rubin chipped in: “Our Fan Republic partnership with Island Records is the latest example of how Indiegogo is committed to innovations and collaborations that harness the power of our open and global platform to help people fund what matters to them”.

To prove that Island’s A&R team really will be checking in on artists using Fan Republic, the label has committed to release a single by at least one act who reaches their fan-funding target in the first six months.



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