The Blender doesn’t typically dive too deep into national music news, but this little tidbit hit my inbox this morning and I couldn’t resist sharing it.
This past year, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign rewrote the books on campaign fundraising, relying on a whole F’in S load of small contributions from a whole F’in S load of people to ultimately raise the most cash of any presidential candidate in history. Folk/pop/rocker Jill Sobule (most of you probably know her 1995 hit “I Kissed a Girl”) took this take-it-to-the-streets attitude to the recording of her soon-to-be-released album California Years.
Sobule started a website (www.jillsnextrecord.com) where fans – of which she has many – could donate any amount to fund the album. With these donations came some perks, of course. Ten bucks gets you a digital download of the album upon its release, $20 gets you an advanced copy of the record and for $50, you’ll get both of the previous offers, plus your name in the “Thank You” portion of the liner notes. For the big spenders: $1,000 gets you your own “theme song” to put on your answering machine performed by Sobule. $5,000 will grant you a house concert and for $10,000 you get to sing on the actual CD.
To date, Jill has raised some $85,000 for her album, more than enough to lay it down on wax. Could this change the way artists record albums? Probably not…but you gotta love the whole for-the-people-by-the-people notion of this whole thing.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2008.
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I think I first heard about an artist doing this maybe 15 years ago. It may have been Sara Hickman, not sure. Since then, it’s become increasing common for artists to turn to their hardcore fanbase to finance new recordings.