Ginger Wildheart

Check this out. Artists are starting to use sites like Kickstarter, Peerbacker, and Pledge Music to fund their project via fan donations. Basically you, the fan, pledge a certain amount of money. If the monetary goal is reached, you're then charged that amount. And for each pledge amount, you get certain perks and stuff. Like $10, for instance, will get you the CD the band is going to get mastered with the money from all the pledges.

I helped By Blood Alone do that for their latest album, and my $50 donation (their goal was $1,500) got me the new album, their previous two (which I already owned), a poster, a t-shirt, and my name in the thank-yous. Not a bad deal for $50.

I pledged $100 to help John Skipp get the sets built for his upcoming movie, Rose. With that pledge I got a signed book, digital download of the book, a t-shirt, a phone call from John Skipp, and a thank you in the movie credits. Maybe not worth $100 just looking at the perks, but John Skipp is a legend in underground horror, has been a great friend to people like Shiney and everyone else at Shock Totem, and has also gone out of his way to promote Shock Totem when he didn't have to. So the $100 is worth it, in my opinion.

One Minute Silence is using Pledge Music to fund their upcoming album. I pledged £19 for the new album, a digital download of it, a DVD of them recording the album as well as playing other tunes live in the studio, plus exclusive tracks along the way. Good deal for the price, but they're only 21% funded and there's just 31 days to go. So that's a bummer.

Some other people have done dumb things with these sites, like ask for donations so they can quit their job and write a novel. Seriously. Screw that.

Anyway, Ginger decided to use Pledge Music to fund an upcoming triple album he wanted to record. I'm not sure how much money he was looking for, but in just a couple of hours he basically funded it. It was at 92% when I pledged £25, which gets me a 3CD set, a digital download, and whatever exclusives are offered along the way. And I guess this album, the physical version anyway, will never be available in stores. Worth it? I think so.

Crazy that he funded it so quickly, though. It's 99% funded right now.

Yeah, I went for the £25 one as soon as I saw the announcement this morning. You're right in saying it will never be available in stores - the 3CD version, that is. Those who get the 3CD version will be voting on which twelve tracks to whittle the album down to for commercial release. It's going to be quite the rarity quite quickly, I think.

Anyway, according to Twitter, Ginger's actually already reached the 100% target - absolutely phenomenal considering it's only been about seven hours since the site went up. It's great in that it shows that there is still a demand for physical release and a willingness to support musicians attempting to go on their own.

However, somewhat less inspiring is the pledging site for Martin Walkyier's The Clan Destined. His reached the end of the time limit (I assume it was 60 or so days again) and only got 7% of what needed. I'm guessing it might be a long while before we hear anything from the Walkyier camp.

It's definitely not something that'll work for everyone. Ginger and The Wildhearts have a cult following, you know, which is not something most bands have.

You know, I was talking to Tracy, Devin Townsend's wife, a while back about Kickstarter. Devin wanted to do something...his next project I think...but lacked the funds. So I mentioned Kickstarter, but they're for US residents only. I wonder if Pledge Music would work for them? I'll have to e-mail her.

Yeah, it's definitely very much dependent on that cult following, don't get me wrong. Martin Walkyier does have a cult following, to an extent, but it is massively tiny and really, most people from it just want a new Sabbat record.

Devin certainly has a similar type of fanbase to Ginger, I'd be surprised if a Pledge Music campaign didn't work for him. However, isn't Devin part of a record label? I'm not sure how well that will integrate with Pledge.

Tourniquet did the Kickstarter thing to afford Neil Kernon. I jumpen onboard, but forgot how much I put in, and what the perks were! I think I get the CD autographed.

I would never do something like that! I don't see how bands can do that. What if the album sucks? Then you get all the perks for a terrible album. Bands need to find other ways to get the monetary funding needed.

I would n't do it because I am a cheap bastard but I have no trouble if band's use this method to fund the recording, distrubtion etc, and who knows this maybe the wave of the future.

manny wrote:

I would n't do it because I am a cheap bastard but I have no trouble if band's use this method to fund the recording, distrubtion etc, and who knows this maybe the wave of the future.

Wave of the future for perpetuating popularity contests, not music. It works now because it's new. But if it caught on wide scale, we'd see everyone that's not already Metallica or U2 attempting this...fans can't buy everything, so the artists who are already popular come out on top while those less so won't even get their record made.

I wish I'd known about Ginger's project; I'd have contributed for sure. I did it for the last Rhino Bucket album.

You still can. For the next 60 days, in fact. He's far surpassed the bare minimum in record breaking time, but any extra funds are certainly worthwhile. These CDs are basically being made to order, so whoever pledges within the time period will definitely get one.

I do agree that this is something that won't work for every band. But I do think it's a good vehicle for lesser known acts with a cult following (which constitutes a surprising amount of rock and metal bands) to continue making music without record companies eating in to their livelihood.

Got a link?

http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/gingerwildheart

There you go, mate. Ridiculously, it's at 179% and it hasn't even been 24 hours. That's actually insane.

Cool! Thanks man!



I think the speed with which this project was funded just shows how much people appreciate the man's talents.

tohostudios wrote:

Cool! Thanks man!

I think the speed with which this project was funded just shows how much people appreciate the man's talents.

Which is why this sort of thing is great. Given that probably 95% of Ginger's musical output has been at least good, with probably more than half that being great, I don't think giving money beforehand is a bad thing. I'm confident I'll be satisfied.

Ginger is definitely one of those musicians who has yet to properly disappoint me. Hell, I even like Endless Nameless. He's one of the few I'd preorder a new album from without hearing any tracks before hand. The man is a consistently good songwriter.

So let's revisit my first post here. I'm still not a big fan of these pledge sites, namely because I think most uses of them—at least for things I'm interested in—are pathetic.

I mentioned above that one author wanted donations so he could quit his job to write a novel. Like it's impossible to work and write, like Stephen King and Dean Koontz and a million other writers didn't hold regular jobs and write at the same time at one point in their career.

But since that first post, I've seen someone trying to raise money to throw a hometown book-release party. Someone else currently wants to raise $1,500 to put out an e-book. This of course is supposedly to pay for artwork and promotion. The authors aren't getting paid, nor does it cost a dime to get an e-book online.

The One Minute Silence project is a joke. Most of their updates consisted of asking for more pledges. They posted some videos, but most were old music videos. There was a single video of an acoustic performance, one with Yap ranting about politics or whatever, and basically nothing that made the whole thing interesting for those who did pledge. Worse, when they hit 100%, they posted some update saying that ideally they need 140%. What a load of crap! Why couldn't they have made whatever number 140% is the actual number from the beginning? Pffft!

The project was funded, so now they're apparently getting ready to record something, which started Feb 1 in London. The final update in January said "...images, sounds and video clips to come." Nothing yet. Lame.

The problem with this stuff is that you're typically pledging more money for access to the band in a greater capacity. One Minute Silence doesn't get that, but Ginger does.

Ginger's campaign was to raise money to record a triple album. Obviously that goal was reached in six hours. Since then, they extended it. I thought that was lame at first, but I've changed my mind on that. Ginger and the other musicians posted tons of exclusive videos, over 50 of them, most from the studio while they were recording, so we got to hear tons of work-in-progress tracks. More importantly, the videos were entertaining. They were funny, the band clearly put a lot of work into giving something to the fans, you know. I loved the videos so much, I pledged an additional £20 for the DVD, which will include all the videos posted plus more that we didn't see, plus a sober and drunk commentary on the whole thing.

In my opinion, paying £45 for three CDs, the digital download, the DVD, plus being able to see all the videos and recording process as it happened was well worth the money. While most everyone else seems to be doing it wrong, Ginger did it right.

And today, they posted an exclusive new song called "You're The One, You're The One, Yeah, I Know You're The One, You're The One (Yeah, I Know You're The One).” And of course it's already on YouTube...



Great song, as always!

Anyway, sorry for the long post. I had to rant a bit.

What's with that cymbal during the verse? That's really annoying.

tohostudios wrote:

What's with that cymbal during the verse? That's really annoying.

Hmmm...didn't even notice it until you mentioned it.

Either way, this sounds a bit under-produced to my ears. I'm hoping it's a rough mix or something.

I think it sounds way underproduced. I definitely hear potential in that song but he needs to polish it up a bit IMO.

Yeah, it's definitely not up to the Ginger standard in the production department.

perhaps they should have extended the extension to get better production.

exact33 wrote:

perhaps they should have extended the extension to get better production.

That can't be the final production. I hope it isn't anyway.

Whilst I wouldn't it expect it to be the final production, I wouldn't be hugely surprised if it was. The Silver Ginger 5 album had a similar kind of production to it - completely lacking polish, but it somehow works. Guess time will tell in this case.

Either way, I definitely agree about how Ginger has done this pledge thing right. The entire campaign has been an enjoyable thing to follow from its inception and we're bound to get a rather nice triple album out of it. It's great to see there are musicians out there who want to give their fans a real treat wherever they can.

And that blond...hubba hubba. No idea who she is, but she's hot as hell! Haha.

Yeah, her name's Vic Liedtke - she's rather stunning. Hell of a singer too, she was great at Ginger's Birthday Bash at the end of last year.