If the fans feel they are dealing directly with the artist, their willingness to pay increases. Bandcamp embodies this 100%, Topspin can embody this if the artist chooses to utilize it that way.
According to Francis, fans paid an average of more than $5 for the 84-cent album, a trend of generosity that Bandcamp founder Ethan Diamond said extends throughout the site, even as overall music sales continue to slide.
“I think a lot of it is the fans’ perception that they’re supporting the artist and they want to pay more when that’s what they perceive,” he said. With donations, “fans are paying about 50% more than whatever that minimum is.”
As more and more people share their creativity online, an enormous amount of content is created. Not all of that content is very good, but when it is, I like to be able to say “Thank you for that!” to the creator.
One way of doing that, which I have been doing for a long time already, is blogging about the wonderful stuff I encounter. I also bookmark interesting stuff on my Delicious, tweet about it and curate moste of it on my Amplify. That’s sharing the attention and excitement.
When I want to acknowledge that something is very valuable to me, I run into problems. Because not everything I like is music on Bandcamp, where I can choose to reward great music with money. Not everything I like is created by someone who’s book I could by on Amazon, to support them.
Flattr was founded to help people share money, not just content. Before Flattr, the only reasonable way to donate has been to use Paypal or other systems to send money to people. The threshold for this is quite high. People would just ignore the option to send donations if it wasn’t for a really important cause. Sending just a small sum has always been a pain in the ass. Who would ever even login to a payment system just to donate €0.01? And €10 was just too high for just one blog entry we liked..
So, there you have it. I will Flattr stuff I like online, and you can Flattr my stuff if you like it by using the orange button below.
What are your thoughts?
Do you think micro-payments are too much of a hassle?
