41 days ago, Sylvia and me started raising funds for the next paniq album. I expected it to be a slow and exhausting uphill-battle, where we would have to convince each and everyone that giving us a few cents would become be the best thing they ever did.
Little did we expect the torrent of support that almost swept us away. Close friends and fans alike were the first to donate, and sometimes we even worried they spend a bit too much on us. After 14 days, the basic production costs were paid, but it did not take long to make the professionally produced CD a reality, this time from a lot of trusting first-time supporters.
You people are awesome. I simply don’t know what to say other than: thank you, times and times again. Never would we have believed that it takes only 190 people and a few days to make something good happen.
Until now, YOU did the hard work which turned a possibility into a fact; now it’s our turn to keep our promise.
What happens next? Fundraising will still run until July 12th for laggards who still want to receive the album early. After that, the fundraising page will be archived, and the album front page will reflect our ongoing production status.
Production starts July 31st, as planned.
If you backed the album with at least €10, you will receive your digital download November 5th, 2010.
If you backed the album with at least €20, you will receive your CD via mail until December 1st, 2010. Sylvia sent everybody a confirmation mail asking for shipping details; if you missed out on the mail, please let us know.
If you backed the album with at least €40, you have already received an invitation to the VIP lounge, where you will be able to watch the daily video log and check out new tracks early. If you haven’t received an invitation, please let us know.
Jun 09
First Goal Reached!
Yesterday evening, after only 14 days of fundraising, we reached the first funding goal of €4588, which means that we can produce the most remarkable album on this entire planet exactly as planned.
It’s amazing how fast you guys & gals reacted. We are speechless, and we love you all. Again, a big thank you to everyone who carried us this far.
Now for the second and final goal: as soon as all of the money has been pledged, the manufacturing and shipping of CD rewards to our donors is secured. If you have pledged €20 or more, you will receive your CD until December 1st, 2010, ready for Christmas. If you have pledged less, it’s not too late to up the ante. Your donations will be accumulated, and you become eligible to receive larger rewards.
I will record a new video where I will explain what’s going to happen next and how we are going to organize production.
Jun 04
Goodbye Blogger, hello Tumblr!
“Wha..what happened to the blog?” you may wonder, to which I softly whisper, with the intonation of a madman: “Like what I’ve done with the place?”
I like Tumblr’s nicer user interface, theme database and templating system. On first impression, it can do a lot less layout-wise than Blogger, but I like how clean and web 2.0-ish everything looks. I imported all old posts, but I couldn’t manage to move the comments as well. They are imported into Disqus, all right. But until I’ve found a way to move them, they will stay there.
Anyway, our fundraising is still running, and we have approximately 37 days to go. We passed the 50% threshold and raised €3634 so far. Thanks to everyone involved, you are crazy! And if you haven’t considered giving us some cash yet: now is a really good time to do so. We are closing in on the goal.
It’s only €821 until basic production cost are entirely covered - from then on it’s just the question when everyone will receive his CD. I hope it’s going to be on time for Christmas.
May 28
The Shout-Out Post
Here are the shout outs to our most generous supporters of the most remarkable album: Reza Esmaili, Yuriy O’Donnell, Martin Klein, Richard White, Andrew Holland, S.J.Bennett, Dominik Rothenberg, Mathias Garbe, Oliver Grünewald, Felix Bohmann, Fabian Giesen, Alex Brem, Richard Hafner, Malte Thiesen, Marcel Stritzelberger, Ulrich Bär, Tammo Hinrichs, Sandro Manke, Andrew Conkling, Andrew Denyes, Liam Jones, Felix Schütz, Tim Bartel, Kai Pöthkow, Peter Knight, Michel Meyers, Michael Sänger, Martijn de Boer, Johan Burell, Angela Grünewald, Michael Schulze, Johannes Grabowski, Holger Rosenlöcher and Jürgen Markert.
May 26
New Tracks: Two Remixes
I held these two tracks back for a few months. Here they are.
May 25
The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire Planet
Originally we planned to launch the campaign on May 29th, but then I noticed that today is Towel Day, and that pretty much changes everything. You see, Douglas Adams is the name patron to “paniq”. 14 years ago on IRC, when I had to pick my first nickname ever, I went for “PaNiC”. As you can imagine, I have not been the only one using it, so I changed one letter.
A big hug to everyone who took the time to take part in the survey.
There were 54 participants in the survey. We added the last question later, it has only been answered by 39 participants. Just for fun, we added the survey donations and ended up with a hypothetical $1620. That would already buy us almost one month of production.
We will most likely go for a fundraising with four distinct milestones, where the first three milestones mark one month of production time, and the fourth one marks the shipping of audio CDs to everyone who participated with an appropriate contribution, once the full amount has been raised.
May 20
Fan-Funded Album Project Survey
After our previous efforts at Kickstarter have oh so miserably failed, Sylvia and me set up a survey to solve the issue of how exactly we are going to fund the next album.
Please have a look and if you like, give us your opinion. That would be tremendously helpful. Thanks in advance! :D
Update: The survey is closed. Results will be published soon.
May 18
HALP! - The Odyssey of Crowdfunding My Next Album
Dear internet. I have a plan, reality is chaos, and thus, I humbly ask for your guidance and wisdom.
You see, I wanted to make a new music album this year: The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire Planet. In fact, that’s the actual title of the album. I own all kinds of technical equipment and musical contraptions, all waiting to join the action - yet the last piece of equipment missing from my home studio is … time.
As we all know, time equals money. I earn my living as a programmer. Being a full-time occupation, such a job can become quite stressful, and stress (my dear friends) does not contribute to an environment that nurtures the brilliant, focused and relaxed creation of amazing soundscapes. But that’s exactly what I have in mind. So where would I take this time from?
Then my musical colleague Auditory Canvas’ recent album release made me aware of Kickstarter, a site that organizes “fan-funded endeavors” or “crowdfunding” in a quite clever way. You set a monetary goal for your project and a fixed count of days to reach this goal. Fans can then pledge a small amount, in exchange for an appropriate reward (e.g. a physical copy of the album for a pledge of $20). Here’s the kick: no money is being transferred until the goal is reached. Only when funding has been successful, pledges turn into actual donations, and the project is completely financed. No risk for backers, no blame for the artist.
“Awesome”, my wife and I thought, and so we went ahead and started planning costs and rewards. We calculated for about four months of production, including manufacturing and shipping of CDs and other rewards, and we ended up at around $15,000 for the whole thing. I set up the project at Kickstarter, and everything seemed to be fine.
This is the timetable we’ve been setting up:
1. Launch project May 29th. 2. Collect pledges until July 12th. If goal is not reached, abort here. 3. Start writing & recording July 31st (my birthday). 4. Finish production November 5th. 5. Have all CDs shipped by December 1st. Merry Christmas.
Except for a little detail. It seems in order to receive funds, you need an Amazon Payments account linked to a U.S. bank account. The U.S. bank account in turn has to belong to someone with a U.S. social security number and a U.S. residence. We are Germans. Drats! We went around and asked our american friends, but no one wanted our money on his bank account. I should have claimed that I am the attorney of a Nigerian prince. I heard it works sometimes.
Allright, so we couldn’t use Kickstarter. IndieGoGo appeared to be a similar site on first sight, but the big difference is that there is no escrow account to hold pledges in limbo. Money is always being transferred, so in case the funding fails to reach the goal, we’re stuck with money we can’t use, and IndieGoGo has already taken 9% of it.
I started to panic (no pun intended). I checked other sites. Fundable is defunct. The Point looked good on first sight, but there’s something shady about the way they transfer funds. First of all, the FAQ remains awfully quiet about the nature of the payout. The only thing I could find was in the project setup form, where they ask where to send the check. Right. The check which gets lost in the mail, but someone cashed it anyway. I get it.
SellaBand looked real good until I checked their Terms and Conditions (thanks to @torusle for warning me!). First of all, they take 10% on each donation before adding it to the fund (so you pay $11, I see $10), then they take another 15% on the payout. That’s a whopping 25% on the entire transaction. Second, funds are transferred after I sent them an invoice, so it’s not a donation and I pay a purchase tax. Third, funds are paid within a maximum of three months. Three months! We wanted to get this baby done by Christmas!
Moving on. There are more sites like IndieGoGo, of which Pledgie seems to be one of the sweetest. They have no transaction costs. All they do is maintaining a little progress bar for your PayPal account, that’s it. But there is still the looming risk of a missed goal, and the manual reimbursement of funds - minus PayPal’s transaction costs. I doubt that backers want to take that risk.
Long story short: we need your insight and your assistance. Can you think of another way? Shall we try to circumvent the whole crowdfunding service thing and do the raising on our own? Would you contribute to our project in exchange for a professionally produced CD and other rewards? Would you take the risk of paying in advance, without knowing if the goal will be reached? Would PayPal be okay? Or Google Checkout? Or what?
If we can’t find any replacement for Kickstarter, we would have to do our own pledge-site using PayPal; we would only store email addresses and the pledge amounts, then manually collect the money when the goal has been reached. In this case, people who have changed their mind could have us end up in the same situation as the IndieGoGo-case.
Update: if we dropped all physical rewards, we could go down to about $8000. In this case, all we could offer to backers is a download link to the album prior to release, and delay the release by at least a month. What do you think?
Update 3: TwtSurvey closed the poll after 20 submissions. I opened a new one: The Fan-Funded Album Project Survey. This one should last. Your input would be much appreciated!
May 13
New Video: “Aliens on Earth”
Finally managed to compile my mini-documentary of plants at Planten & Blomen, thanks to OpenShot. Also features some of my music, check it out.
