Article

new media & society

2021, Vol. 23(9) 2575–2592
Cultural production and ª The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
platform mediation: A case sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1461444820932555
in music crowdfunding journals.sagepub.com/home/nms

Francesco D’Amato
Milena Cassella
University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy

Abstract
Although a great amount of research has been concerned with the growing relevance of
crowdfunding for cultural productions, it is still little investigated how the actual func-
tioning of crowdfunding platforms can affect both the way of conceiving and doing
crowdfunding and the financing opportunities and performances of different projects.
The article illustrates how this occurs in the case of an Italian crowdfunding platform,
through activities of project classification and evaluation and campaign consulting it
carries out, which are not visible from the outside. It also points out how these activities
are shaped through the constant search for a balance between meritocratic principles
and company sustainability. Opening what is usually treated as an organizational black
box, the article provides an original contribution that enriches the understanding of the
ways in which crowdfunding platforms can influence the production of culture as well as
the subjectivities characterized by the neoliberal ethos of self-management and self-
entrepreneurship.

Keywords
Crowdfunding, cultural production, digital platforms, DIY, gatekeeping, music

Introduction
Over the last decade, crowdfunding has constituted a mechanism of increasing relevance
for supporting cultural productions, paralleling a general decrease in public funding and
private investments (Bannerman, 2013; Boeuf et al., 2014; Migliavacca et al., 2016),

Corresponding author:
Francesco D’Amato, University of Rome La Sapienza, 00185 Roma, Italy.
Email: [email protected]
2576 new media & society 23(9)

especially for small organizations and lesser known creatives with little experience or
working in niche markets (Cicerchia, 2013). At the same time, the studies dealing with
this practice have increased. The three areas most investigated by the research on
crowdfunding concern the following: (1) how different features and strategies of creators
affect campaign performance, (2) the reconfiguration of the relationships between
creatives and audiences who participate in the project as backers, and (3) the critical
scrutiny of forms of empowering often ascribed to creatives and audiences as a result of
the disintermediation of traditional producers and sponsors (Brooker, 2015; Davidson
and Poor, 2015; Gehring and Wittkower, 2015; Kustritz, 2015). However, what remains
relatively little investigated is the active mediation played by the web platforms offering
services to manage crowdfunding campaigns. These platforms are not neutral instru-
ments but organizations with their own interests, ideas, and business models. In recent
years, several studies have focused on how digital platforms influence the processes for
which they are used, both through the design of the technological infrastructure and the
terms of use of the service, and through the criteria and procedures that inform content
moderation and management, the latter understood in terms of content selection, clas-
sification, and organization (Gillespie, 2018; Nieborg and Poell, 2018; Van Dijck et al.,
2018). On the one hand, they can condition the actions of different types of users,
technically and normatively inhibiting certain uses while rewarding others; on the other
hand, their conventional functioning and the discourses through which they promote
themselves contribute to generating expectations which in turn orient users’ behaviors.
The concrete mediations operated by the platforms are generally opaque from the out-
side, in order to defend an idea of inclusiveness, impartiality, and neutrality (Gillespie,
2018). This also applies to cultural crowdfunding platforms, whose promotional rhetoric
often insists on offering all creatives the same opportunities to benefit from the wealth of
networks and to find the resources to carry out their projects, favoring a purely mer-
itocratic logic (D’Amato, 2017).
These premises represented the research framework on the Italian crowdfunding
platform Musicraiser (MR). The aim is to shed some light on the hidden criteria and
practices organizing the operation of a platform used to present, promote, and finance
cultural projects, establishing how they influence such aspects of the crowdfunding
process and—possibly—the performance achieved by different campaigns. The choice
of this particular platform has a twofold motivation: on the one hand, music has always
been one of the sectors most affected by crowdfunding; on the other hand, MR is the
second reward crowdfunding platform in Italy for funding collected, as well as being the
first among those dedicated to a specialized area of cultural production (Starteed, 2016,
2017, 2018). Furthermore, MR has many features common to most of the platforms for
cultural crowdfunding, such as the business model and the crowdfunding methods
adopted, therefore, it can be considered in many aspects representative of a class of
services (De Voldere and Zeqo, 2017).
The research consisted of 25 in-depth interviews conducted between June and
October 2019 with people who work or have worked at MR, from its launch in 2012 until
today, covering various roles: 4 campaign managers, 1 events manager, 2 social media
managers, 1 content manager, 2 internal talent scouts, and 15 external talent scouts.
Information gathered through interviews was supplemented by other interviews with the
D’Amato and Cassella 2577

founders available on the web and by the reading of two non-public documents: the
guidelines for musicians and those for the scouts.
The research has made it possible to highlight the influence of the platform both on
funding opportunities and performances for different musicians, and on the musicians’
approach to communication and project management. It will be shown how such
influence is exercised through (1) various forms of gatekeeping, (2) the evaluation of the
project’s potential, (3) campaign planning consultancy, and (4) the kind of assistance and
promotional support offered to different projects. At the same time, we will point to the
cultural and economic logic underlying the policies adopted by the platform, as well as to
their continuous adjustments due to the constant search for a balance between the
platform objectives and the shifting environmental conditions (such as changes in market
trends).
The research allows us to observe the type of mediations that crowdfunding platforms
can exert on music production, detecting continuity and discontinuity with traditional
intermediaries in the sector, while at a more general level it enriches the understanding of
both cultural crowdfunding and the ways web-platforms and -services can influence the
cultural production they contribute to articulating.

Music crowdfunding and musicraiser

Most musicians who choose to undertake a crowdfunding campaign opt for the use of
web-platforms specialized in offering crowdfunding services, especially those musicians
that are less well-known and with fewer resources and who, therefore, represent the main
market for such services. The reasons lie both in the convenience of using an existing
tool designed ad hoc and in the expectation of reaching a wider audience and achieving
greater visibility than would be possible through their own sites and social pages.
Moreover, these platforms tend to promote particular representations of crowdfunding
and its benefits for creators: it allows them to gain more “artistic freedom” (Sellaband)
and “control on their own careers” (Sellaband and Pledge Music), “an equal opportunity
to pursue a musical career” (Sellaband), “the opportunity to harness the power of the
crowd” (Rocket Hub), to be “your own A&R and Marketing Manager” (Pledge Music),
and to fund their ideas “without a middleman dictating the product and terms”
(Kickstarter).1
Since its launch in October 2012, MR has been the reference platform for musical
crowdfunding in Italy. The popularity and reputation of the co-founder Giovanni Gulino,
front man of the renowned independent band Marta sui Tubi, favored the visibility of the
enterprise on the media and its credibility with musicians. After just 2 years, its relevance
was attested by the numbers: almost a quarter of the albums produced in Italy in 2014
had been financed through MR (Rusconi, 2015).
Like almost 90% of the crowdfunding platforms dedicated to cultural projects, MR
only hosts reward-based campaigns adopting the “all-or-nothing” mechanism2 (De
Voldere and Zeqo, 2017; Röthler and Wenzlaff, 2011). The revenue model consists in
retaining a percentage of the funds from campaigns that reach or exceed their goal,
another feature in common with most cultural crowdfunding platforms. MR retains 10%
for itself, which with the addition of taxes and transaction costs brings the overall fee to
2578 new media & society 23(9)

around 15% (Rusconi, 2015). In addition to the technological infrastructure for pre-
senting the campaign and collecting the funds, MR has enriched its offer with additional
services.
First of all, musicians are assisted by a campaign manager in the planning and
management of the campaign. Second, the platform contributes in various ways to
promoting the campaigns, while through some partnerships it offers its customers dis-
counts for CD printing and merchandising. Finally, for those who have successfully
completed the crowdfunding campaign, the MR founders stated that they provide,

at the request of the artist, services that include press office, physical and digital distribu-
tion. In practice we will work as a “cold” record company, in the sense that we will not
discuss the artistic choices of the artist but we will be ready to publish him if he has reached
its funding goal. (Izzo, 2012)

In this case musicians keep 90% of their royalties.

The mission of MR, in the words of its founders, is to “promote co-production sup-
ported by fans” (Rusconi, 2015), an alternative way “to make oneself known” compared
to relying on traditional labels, considered in crisis and little attentive to quality (FQ,
2015; Raiola, 2014). At the same time the founders have repeatedly stated that the
alternative character of crowdfunding does not imply opposition to the traditional music
system, since not only can the service be used by record labels but—more importantly—
they consider it a success when musicians who reach their goal on MR succeed in
establishing production or distribution agreements with traditional labels, including
majors. In this way, and on other occasions too, they highlight the positioning and the
privileged targets of MR, that is, its appropriateness as an alternative route for the launch
of the careers of independent and little-known musicians, to be possibly developed
within more conventional routes.
Another aspect characterizing the discourse on crowdfunding through which the
founders of MR promote their service consists in the constant referring to meritocracy;
thanks to crowdfunding the products deemed most deserving by music fans are finally
realized:

It is a completely meritocratic tool and we wanted it! (Raiola, 2014) It gives the public the
opportunity to decide which artists should go on. It seemed to us a beautiful and meritocratic
thing, which somehow bypassed the traditional process. (Cicciotti, 2015)

At the same time, the founders repeat in many interviews that the quality of the
project is not sufficient to achieve public appreciation: the ability to communicate is
at least as important. The concept of merit appears to be closely connected to the ability
to communicate effectively with the means available:

It’s not enough to be good musicians, to make a good crowdfunding campaign you also need
to be good at communicating ideas and emotions (Raiola, 2014). It all depends on how you
communicate your project to the fans. It’s like a means of locomotion, it takes you to your
destination or not, it only depends on your ability to drive it. (Rusconi, 2015)
D’Amato and Cassella 2579

Musicraiser history and functioning

Two forms of gatekeeping
One of the main research perspectives on the production of culture is concerned both
with the criteria and processes through which organizations mediating the relationship
between creators and public select the excess of creative inputs available, and with the
factors affecting these processes (Hirsch, 1972). The attention to digital platforms in
terms of organizations mediating cultural production has produced research focused on
an analogous interest in various forms of gatekeeping and content curation as part of the
platformization of cultural production, particularly in the music field (Bonini and
Gandini, 2019; Morris and Powers, 2015). Gatekeeping can be defined as the application
of selective criteria in both the admission and active search for content (Janssen and
Verboord, 2015). Both processes are integral to the way MR operates.
First, MR does not automatically accept all the projects proposed by musicians
interested in undertaking a crowdfunding campaign. In various interviews, the founders
Gulino and Varuni underlined the relevance of this initial selection, motivated by the
desire to gather projects that “have the basics to evolve” (OndaRock, 2013), coming
from musicians with “a certain credibility and not entirely beginners” (Raiola, 2014).
Their idea was that “arriving on the site should be a goal and a springboard” (OndaRock,
2013). In 2015, Gulino stated that “we publish one project in four” (Rusconi, 2015),
while a campaign manager confirmed to us that in the first years of the platform’s
activity the selection was “very very rigid,” aimed at favoring those who had clear ideas,
an already formed fan-base and—above all—excellent communication skills (Inter-
viewed 1, campaign manager).
Starting from the second-half of 2016, coinciding—according to the interviewees—
with a first drop in demand, MR has also begun to carry out a systematic scouting
activity, until then sporadic and marginal, employing figures specifically dedicated to it
and hugely extending its network of external collaborators. Internal scouts are employed
full-time at the MR headquarters with a fixed salary, while external scouts are colla-
borators scattered throughout Italy who autonomously choose how much time to devote
to scouting and only earn percentages on the crowdfunding campaigns they help to
activate. The scouts’ tasks consist in identifying musicians considered suitable and
interesting as potential customers and convincing them to undertake a crowdfunding
campaign on MR. Scouts are trained to carry out both activities according to precise
criteria, spelled out also in a guideline document. In the words of many interviewees,
both scouts and campaign managers, scouting is explicitly defined in terms of a com-
mercial activity, aimed at selling the service to potential customers rather than dis-
covering new talent:3

Actually, I started with Musicraiser as a salesman, who was called talent scout there. [ . . . ]
Scouting is a job for sales force. (Interviewed 2, campaign manager)
Talent scout maybe it’s a very big term for what was done . . . she/he was a person who
proposes something, a business promoter. (Interviewed 16, external scout)
2580 new media & society 23(9)

There was a strong activity on the commercial side, there were colleagues scouting via
social networks to get in touch with potential musicians, to propose and present Musicraiser.
(Interviewed 8, social media manager)

In this regard, the scouts’ guidelines do not provide only the criteria to be adopted to
evaluate and select musicians but also the strategies to convince them to use the service
and the answers to their more frequent doubts and perplexities.
Our interviews with scouts and the guidelines—as well as the interviews with social
media managers, regarding the target of MR communication—have made it possible to
outline the ideal profile sought: (1) independent band or musician without label, (2) not
absolute beginner but supported by an already acquired fan-base, and (3) good at
interacting with fans, a skill measured by social media engagement. The latter is con-
sidered the most relevant parameter by all the scouts and campaign managers inter-
viewed, while the guidelines warn that “the artist’s communication skills are the most
important thing in crowdfunding, more than the artistic value and the music proposal.”
Once the musicians reputed to be ideal clients have been identified, more experienced
internal scouts contact them directly to promote the service, while the external scouts and
the less experienced internal scouts must first deal with a campaign manager performing
the function of scout coordinator. It is not infrequent that some of the proposed profiles,
in particular from external scouts, are rejected by the campaign manager and, therefore,
not contacted at all. The reasons for such discrepancies between the evaluations of the
campaign managers and those of the scouts lie in the aforementioned criteria: sometimes,
the latter propose musicians under contract with important labels or consider only the
extensiveness of the fan-base and not the actual engagement, or they have not recognized
a fake engagement resulting from the purchase of likes. Moreover, more than one
campaign manager has stressed the tendency of many scouts—especially external
ones—to try to attract as many musicians as possible, sometimes not discriminating
enough. This can happen for two reasons. First, scouts, both internal and external, are
rewarded with 3% of the funds raised by the musicians they brought to the platform
whose campaigns reach or exceed the goal; while for the internal scouts this is an
additional income that integrates their salary, for the external ones it is the only remu-
neration for their scouting activity. Second, scouts have to deal with the high percentage
of both musicians not interested in crowdfunding and dropouts (people who register on
the platform but do not get to launch the campaign). Therefore, some external scouts tend
to be less selective, in order to reach an acceptable number of published campaigns.
The platform has employed as scouts mostly people active at various levels in dif-
ferent areas of the music field: record producers, sound engineers, DJs, music critics,
bloggers, social media managers, musicians who had previously carried out successful
campaigns on MR but also new graduates, and young enthusiasts with knowledge of the
sector. This means that the 3% economic incentive, designed to encourage scouts to
search for projects with high potential, can become a factor influencing the chances of
success of the campaigns: on the one hand, earning a percentage on successful cam-
paigns can incentivize scouts to engage also in their promotion; on the other hand,
different scouts occupy positions in the field characterized by a different capacity to push
musicians. As an example, a scout who works as a journalist at a music magazine and
D’Amato and Cassella 2581

who has a good reputation and large following on his social pages is clearly in a better
position to effectively promote the campaigns from which to make a (small) profit if
successful, compared to the young music lover for whom scouting at MR is the first work
experience.
Finally, there are two other aspects that scouts are expected to consider and that can
change the assessment according to which musicians are worth being contacted: the
number of members of a band and the musical genre. The relevance of the former is quite
obvious: the campaign managers believe that a band with several musicians can count on
more extensive social ties to be mobilized for funding. For example, this means that if a
single musician and a big band have an analogous (small) fan-base and (low) engage-
ment on social media, the latter still has more chances of arousing the interest of the
platform:
There were also other types of mistakes [made by scouts]: bands that were not contacted
because they had little engagement but that would have been perfect for crowdfunding. For
example, the classic folk group, with twenty-six elements, from Frosinone: it was perfect to
make a campaign, even if it had a ridiculous engagement. (Interviewed 6, internal scout and
scout coordinator)

Regarding the second aspect, although MR accepts projects of any musical genre,
some of these are associated with audiences with greater economic resources or greater
propensity to support musicians. The two most recurrent examples in respondents’
reports are classical music and heavy metal:
Particular genres were sought more, I’ll give you an example: metal, it’s a genre that goes a
lot, because they have a solid fan base, actually also because metal groups are less than
before, fan-bases are strong and ready to help bands. A newly born indie group maybe
doesn’t have the same strength. (Interviewed 20, internal scout)
Trick or Treat made a campaign, a band that is not enormously famous but they are very
strong in the metal field, and we know that metal audience is very inclined to buy CDs and
to spend, so obviously we go for a lot on that campaign [ . . . ]. If a metal band arrives [on the
platform] we know that it tends to have a certain type of audience, who is used to spending
and that has a certain propensity to support the artist. (Interviewed 3, campaign manager)

In the next paragraphs, we will see how these criteria also influence the setting up of
funding goals and the effort that the campaign managers put into different campaigns,
two factors that in turn can affect the funding performances.

Assessing the potential

Once approved, crowdfunding requests and scouted projects are entrusted to the care of a
campaign manager, who assists the musician/band both in the initial planning of the
campaign and after its launch. In particular, the activity of the campaign manager
focuses on the following five aspects: (1) the evaluation of the project potential, in order
to suggest an achievable goal; (2) the suggestion of the rewards to be associated with
different funding quotas; (3) the indications concerning how to present the project to the
audience through the platform; (4) the evaluation and the suggestions concerning the
2582 new media & society 23(9)

pre- and post-launch communications planned by the musician; and (5) the post-launch
adjustments in the campaign communication if needed. The work of the campaign
manager also includes explaining crowdfunding to the less experienced who autono-
mously register on the platform, motivating those who are uncertain in the phases prior to
the launch of the campaign, supporting those who during the campaign decrease their
commitment to communication or become demoralized if things are not going well.
First of all, campaign managers draw up an estimate of how much the musician/band
can collect, considering on the one hand the pool of potential financiers, represented by
the strong and weak ties of the musicians and the pre-existing fan-base, on the other hand
the average funding per person, based on previous campaigns. Following these assess-
ments, a lower goal is established, to further increase the chances of succeeding,
sometimes inducing musicians to recalibrate their expectations. Of course, the evalua-
tion of the project potential also takes into account the aspects mentioned earlier, such as
social media engagement, number of members of a band, and musical genre. The eva-
luation of the potential of a campaign and the consequent setting of the objective can
affect its results: if, on the one hand, it is true that a low goal does not preclude the
possibility of exceeding it, since the campaigns reaching their goal before the deadline
can still continue until the end of the pre-established period, on the other hand, some
studies argue that the premature achievement of the objective can discourage the con-
tribution of further potential financiers (Burtch et al., 2013). Furthermore, the evaluation
of the campaign potential serves not only to establish a credible goal but also to estimate
the potential profitability of the various published projects for the platform.
We will see how this estimate influences the commitment of the campaign managers
to different campaigns and, therefore, their results, at least if we believe that the former
can help to improve the latter.

Cultivating marketing attitude and skills

All respondents attach great importance to the different rewards that the creator estab-
lishes in exchange for different contributions. Although everyone acknowledges that
most of the funders of little-known musicians are relatives, friends, and fans, the
rewards—especially those consisting of objects with a clearly quantifiable economic
value—are considered crucial to incentivize financing on the part of weak and latent ties.
At the same time, all the campaign managers have remarked that one of the greatest
difficulties, during the planning of the campaign, consists in making musicians under-
stand the appropriate criteria for the choice of the rewards and for their association with a
particular funding share, that is, for their “pricing”. For this reason, the musicians’
guidelines include a very extensive and detailed part concerning the formulation and
pricing of the rewards, with lots of recommended funding shares, referred to as “rewards
prices.” Campaign managers and guidelines also suggest to design the rewards taking
into account their communicative function, in order to make them part of a strategic
storytelling.
The communication of the campaign does not end with its presentation on the plat-
form, for which campaign managers and guidelines offer standard indications, but
commit creators for the whole duration of the campaign (maximum 2 months). As widely
D’Amato and Cassella 2583

attested by the literature on crowdfunding (D’Amato, 2011; Thorley, 2012), and con-
firmed by the interviewees, this work is the hardest for musicians, as almost all the
promotional activity falls on them. Again, the campaign managers and the guidelines
offer detailed indications on the techniques of engagement to be used, the type of
contents to be published and the most appropriate ways and moments in which to do it.

Pushing those who deserve it

A few months after the MR launch, Gulino explained that
Our service includes online and off-line promotions that allow a crowdfunding campaign to
also become an excellent opportunity to foster buzz and acquire immediate visibility,
especially on the web but also in print media. [ . . . ] In addition, Musicraiser promotes the
projects it considers most interesting or most original at its own expense. (Don Pizzica,
2013)

Our interviews confirmed that promotional boost follows a discriminatory logic,

based on campaign performances in the period following their launch. Starting from
January 2017, shortly after the drop in demand and the consequent development of the
scouting system aimed at countering it, this mechanism was more articulated and for-
malized in the crowdfunding program called “Accelerator.” This program introduced a
gamification framework that configures certain actions aimed at supporting the cam-
paigns—such as promotion on the platform home page, social media, newsletter, and
blog, or the possibility of playing live at events organized by MR—as prizes reserved for
the most deserving, that is, as promotions activated according to the number of raisers
progressively reached. The final prize, initially corresponding to 200 raisers, consisted in
the proposal of a contract by Believe Digital, partner of the initiative, for physical and
digital promotion and distribution.
The program was presented as “a new absolutely meritocratic opportunity for the
development of an artist’s career” (Cinzia, 2017), intended to “create a launching pad for
musicians who really deserve success regardless of the type of music they propose. Only
quality matters” (Distopic, 2017). In this context, merit—and quality—are then mea-
sured by the results of the campaigns, or rather by the ability to mobilize increasing
numbers of people willing to back the realization of the project proposed by the
musicians.
Here too, other criteria can carry weight in the choice of the campaigns to be awarded.
In particular, the research revealed some factors that could influence the choice of groups
to be played live in the events organized by MR. Starting from the second-half of 2016,
the service implemented two formats: the first consisted in giving the creators of the
most successful concluded campaigns the opportunity to open the concert of well-known
musicians, at renowned festivals and clubs; the second—named Musicraiser Unplug-
ged—consisted of an acoustic half-hour showcase followed by an interview, broadcasted
live on Facebook, taking place twice a month and aimed at rewarding the campaigns that
were going best among those still open. However, the choice of who to let play some-
times took into account also the musical genre: in the first case, to propose musicians
congruent with the headliner or with the club or festival in which they were hosted; in the
2584 new media & society 23(9)

second, to ensure a harmonious combination between the MR musicians playing on the

same evening, so as to avoid that “the evening was a little confused, strange” (Inter-
viewed 1, campaign manager). Moreover, especially in the second case, the geographical
distance between the place where the musicians lived and the cities of Rome and Milan,
where the showcases were held, conditioned the possibility of taking advantage of the
offer:

Since they were promotional dates and there wasn’t a budget for the band that was going to
play but only hospitality, the geographical distance was also considered. I cannot send a
group from Sicily to Rome, without any expenses refund [ . . . ] the choice is up to the band,
but it’s quite unlikely that a Sicilian group will spend six hundred euros for a thirty minutes
show, even if broadcasted live on Facebook. (Interviewed 5, event manager)

The choice of linking the Accelerator prizes to the number of raisers, and in the case
of the final prize even to a minimum objective of raised funds,4 seems to have depended
on the willingness to test the market potential of a musician/band, therefore, producing
crucial information to decide on a possible investment on the promotion and distribution
of the project on the part of a record label:

If you have made a certain number of raisers you have automatically sold a certain number
of CDs, because Accelerator was reserved for campaigns with sales of record products.
There was the obligation to insert the physical copy of the disc in all the rewards, so it
worked like a kind of pre-order. Therefore, I think that was the basic logic: if you sold a
certain quantity it means that you have a certain potential for a record proposal, since you
present yourself to the label with already 200-250 copies sold. (Interviewed 3, campaign
manager)

After just 10 months, MR introduced a new version of Accelerator, in which the last
prize, the non-binding proposal of a recording contract, was made directly by MR.
Therefore, the service proposed itself as a phonographic label for the creators of the
most successful campaigns. The change was presented—once again—insisting on the
meritocratic nature of such mechanism:

Musicraiser Accelerator is an alternative to self-production or to the constant knocking on

the doors of record companies, a meritocratic way to involve the public and lead it into a
collective experience of success (Cantire, 2017). To reach the end of the Accelerator
journey, talent and professionalism are required, as well as a lot of effort. We are able to
measure all this with the number of fans that the artist manages to involve during his
campaign, rewarding him with ad-hoc services that we have thought of and whose effec-
tiveness we have tested in all these years of activity. (Musicoff, 2017)

Toward the end of 2018, the program undergoes a further change, becoming
“Futurissima Speed Up,” reserved for musicians and bands below 30 years. Futurissima
is a new integrated management agency, created as part of the Music Innovation Hub
with which MR collaborates. It explicitly uses the crowdfunding platform as a scouting
tool, offering a distribution contract and press office to musicians whose campaigns
reach the last step of 150 raisers.
D’Amato and Cassella 2585

Campaign management as portfolio management

According to the interviewees, scouting worked well especially during the first year,
until the early months of 2018, when there was a new drop in demand, interpreted in
terms of market saturation. The platform responded to this event in two related ways.
First of all, by broadening its target:
We tried to aim at different targets, because we had reached a point where we were going to
stir a little bit within the same target, there were always very similar campaigns: a lot of folk
music, alternative rock, and the age was always more or less the same, so we wanted a little
change and tried to expand to other targets, even trying to change the whole communication
a bit [ . . . ]. Let’s say the mood of the moment was to be open to different target and genres,
different age, that is to change a bit the communication. (Interviewed 10, content manager)

The second move consisted in loosening the inbound selection, thanks to a different
organization of the work of campaign managers. MR has always devoted a greater
amount of time and attention to the relatively few campaigns of established musicians,
capable of generating more revenue and publicity for the service:
Then there were the big projects, those from artists who already had a name, a credibility, a
history, on whom obviously you worked differently, deeper, working more closely with
them, that’s’ normal. Like everything, if you get the customer who can make a 20,000 euro
campaign, and with that one customer you have a 10% fee, it means you can get 2,000 euros,
while when you have an artist aiming to collect 1,000 euros the proportion changes, and so
also the attention and the effort that you can put in it, and this is something that must be clear
to everyone from the beginning. (Interviewed 2, campaign manager)
When you get an artist, who is already well established and has an extra potential, special
attention is given to him. (Interviewed 3, campaign manager)
For the communication of MR we mostly used the top artists using the platform. Having
important musicians is the best way to promote the service. (Interviewed 8, social media
manager)

However, when the drop in demand led to loosening the inbound filter, a differen-
tiated way to manage all projects was devised, aimed at allocating resources on the basis
of the estimated profitability of the projects, that is of the expectations of return on
investment, a mechanism that evokes the portfolio management adopted by large tradi-
tional labels (Negus, 1999):
The way of working has changed a bit, it has become a bit more streamlined, we leave more
autonomy to creators to build their own campaign and then, at a second level, we review and
fix. Let’s say that the filter has been loosened. [Question] What was the reason for this
change, this loosening? [Answer] the work of the campaign manager obviously requires a
lot of time, above all consultancy, to make people understand how the platform works, what
is the best way to set up the campaign . . . to dedicate the same number of hours to a
campaign that can do a thousand euros and to a campaign that can make ten thousand is
clearly a messy management model, because it means that you spend a lot of time on
campaigns that maybe make you gain a tenth. The loosening is because we have tried to
streamline the whole consultancy process for the campaign . . . at that point, being able to
2586 new media & society 23(9)

afford to use fewer hours for each campaign, we could also accommodate a greater number
of campaigns [ . . . ] there is the basic service that is always done, then when you find a
campaign that actually has many chances to raise ten thousand euros instead of a thousand
you put more work in it, because, very trivially, there is a potential revenue higher than the
standard. (Interviewed 3, campaign manager)

The same campaign manager emphasizes that this change has been dictated and
facilitated also by a different market trend:
Then the market changed a bit, in recent years we have seen more and more campaigns that
were small, both in terms of potential and goal; clearly less time is needed for them, so you
go to increase a little the inbound numbers. (Interviewed 3, campaign manager)

Concluding remarks
Crowdfunding involves the communication of a project and the fundraising for its
production. While the platforms enabling this practice are often represented and per-
ceived as tools that only connect demand and supply, their organizational and entre-
preneurial nature, as well as their culture and their constant search for sustainable
business models within highly dynamic environments, affect the ways they mediate the
crowdfunding process, possibly influencing the chance and extent of the funding of
different campaigns and, therefore, the cultural production based on crowdfunding.
In the case of MR, the founders’ intent to promote a fair and meritocratic mechanism
to support musicians—like they are—takes on specific forms conditioned by the actual
difficulty in balancing the company’s sustainability and ethics. On the one hand, they
offer a service committed to helping musicians in achieving their goals and which is paid
only if this happens; on the other hand, they try to balance efforts and returns by adopting
specific criteria and procedures for the selection, evaluation, and classification of
projects, which influence the kind of boost granted to different projects and tend to favor
those deemed to have the greatest chance of success.
By explicitly selecting published projects, MR positions itself as guarantor of the
seriousness and credibility of the chosen musicians and their proposals. In this regard,
previous research, concerning musicians who carry out campaigns on MR, highlighted
the fact that some of them consider the selection and publication of their project on the
site as an important form of accreditation, useful to stand out from the crowd of proposals
generated by widespread self-production (Cassella and D’Amato, 2014). The criteria and
procedures for evaluating projects and promoting campaigns tend to favor those musi-
cians who seem to have greater social capital and who show a greater ability to
mobilize it.5 Such evaluations consider not only the extensiveness of their existing fan-
base and social ties and their skills in communication, measured through indexes of
engagement on social media, but also the type of musical scene and genre in which the
musician is contextualized. In this way, crowdfunding appears not only as a way to
finance the content through which the musicians present themselves to the market, but
also as a test to verify their effective ability to promote themselves and to aggregate a
certain number of people willing to pay for their projects, therefore, useful in assessing
D’Amato and Cassella 2587

their potential in view of possible investments by other subjects. Any positive results to
this “test” can offer creators the opportunity to reach conventional agreements with
traditional intermediaries of music production and distribution. From this perspective,
the platform seems to fulfill a typical function of independent labels within a phono-
graphic system that connects their propensity for innovation (discover and launch new
talents) with the innovation capacity of larger labels (promote them more effectively to a
wider market). As we saw in the second paragraph, since the beginning, MR has posi-
tioned itself ambiguously with respect to the traditional record industry: on the one hand,
a more meritocratic “alternative,” which is a typical value proposition of musical
crowdfunding since the days of Sellaband; on the other hand, a service available for and
interested in integrating with that system, promoting its use by record labels and sug-
gesting that succeeding on MR would facilitate musicians to further evolve their career
attracting traditional labels. However, this is not a unique position of MR: in 2016, the
head of Kickstarter Music stated that she intended to overturn the perception that
Kickstarter was part of a disruptive world, especially with regard to labels, and to find
ways to collaborate with music companies, rather than stand as an alternative to them
(Gehring, 2018). However, while Kickstarter seems to have modeled itself after social
media (Davidson, 2019), the path taken by MR has been characterized by similarities to
the organizational and operational methods of the labels. Considering DiMaggio and
Powell’s observations on isomorphism (1983), this disposition could be attributed to the
following two factors: first, an implicit mode of legitimization of the crowdfunding
service through adaptation to an environment in which labels—despite many com-
ments—have not lost their relevance, either practical, as a means for the development of
a musical career, or symbolic, since many musicians still consider it important to obtain
the support of a label (Hesmondhalgh and Meier, 2018; Marshall, 2012); second, the MR
founders’ background in the professional culture of the independent record industry.
The alternative character of crowdfunding, therefore, seems to lie simply in con-
stituting a different option for funding among others, one which seems to favor some
people more than others. The discourse and the modus operandi of MR clearly represent
the communication ability, strategically deployed and regarding, in particular, the use of
social media, as the main quality on which the success of the subjects who use crowd-
funding depends. Through the advice about the qualities and work required to succeed,
the criteria guiding the scouting activity, the evaluation and classification of projects,
and the suggestions for the planning of the campaign, the platform appears to select and
train specific subjectivities, considered the most suitable to maximize the opportunities
offered by crowdfunding. The analysis of the actual functioning of MR, therefore,
provides an original contribution that enrich and deepen the understanding of the con-
crete ways in which common declinations of crowdfunding are conducive to the pro-
duction of subjectivities characterized by the neoliberal ethos of self-management and
self-entrepreneurship (Bannerman, 2013; Booth, 2015; Gehring, 2018), aligning
crowdfunding platforms and practices with the ecosystem of social media and web
services that both promote self-marketing and self-branding attitudes (Klein et al., 2017;
Marwick, 2013) and encourage people to consider social relationships as social capital,
whose cultivation should be an integral part of the artistic work and whose mobilization
is deemed crucial to develop a career. This relational labor (Baym, 2015),6 especially
2588 new media & society 23(9)

insofar as it is mediated by digital platforms, requires a lot of effort and time, resources to
invest, differentiated skills to be trained, even an adequate personality (D’Amato, 2019;
Davidson, 2019).
These considerations bring us to the last point, concerning the rhetoric about
democratization—and meritocracy—associated with crowdfunding. In contrast with the
discourses asserting the ability of the platforms to level the playing field, different
opportunities to benefit from the wealth of networks still seem dependent on the unequal
distribution of different kinds of resources in the social field, especially social capital,
which research attests as a key factor for succeeding in crowdfunding (Borst et al., 2018;
D’Amato, 2016; D’Amato and Miconi, 2012; Zheng et al., 2014) and that, in turn, it
could eventually depend on one’s position in the social field and on the amounts of
economic and cultural capital possessed by different subjects (Bourdieu, 1986).

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

ORCID iD
Francesco D’Amato https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1337-9315

Notes
1. Those are just a few examples, one of which (about Kickstarter) quoted from Davidson (2019:
124), while the others are quoted from old web pages—not online anymore—of the mentioned
websites. They were collected between 2010 and 2012 for a previous research. (More on the
crowdfunding platforms rhetoric on D’Amato, 2011, 2014, 2017; Gehring and Wittkower,
2015.)
2. In “all-or-nothing” campaigns, those who launch a campaign actually receive the funds raised
only if they have reached or exceeded the pre-established goal within the set deadline. On the
contrary, in “all-you-can-get” campaigns, the applicants can access the amount collected
regardless of the achievement of the initial goal.
3. As far as we know, MR is the only cultural crowdfunding platform that carries out this kind of
practice, proactively searching for clients. Anyway, this activity is hidden from the public, not
mentioned on the website pages and in public interviews: we initially came to know about it
during some previous research, consisting in interviews with musicians using MR, therefore,
we cannot exclude that other platforms do the same without publicizing it and we cannot know
for certain whether this practice is unique to MR or more conventional than is generally
thought.
4. The reports from interviewees attest that MR had established both a minimum figure for the
single pledges, and a minimum of 4000 euros or 5000 euros as a requirement for the final prize
(in addition to the total number of raisers). Both rules aimed to avoid having campaigns with a
very high number of raisers that invest very little and—consequently—an excessively low
overall financing, even for successful campaigns.
5. Here, social capital is understood as an embodied productive investment in relationships based
on trust, norms, shared values, and affection that can lead to benefits for those who made the
investment, therefore, constituting a resource of people to achieve goals they could not
achieve by themselves or could only achieve with great difficulty (Bianco, 1996; Field, 2008).
D’Amato and Cassella 2589

6. Baym’s (2015) definition of “relational work” in terms of continuous and personal interactions
with the public, in view not of immediate compensation but as an investment aimed at building
and maintaining social relationships that will support a career and will allow people to earn
money (pp. 14–16), seems to describe an important part of the process of building social
capital as defined in Note 5.

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Author biographies
Francesco D’Amato is an assistant professor at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” His
research and publications concern mainly creative industries, popular music studies, participatory
culture, DIY, and cultural crowdfunding.
Milena Cassella graduated with a PhD in Communication, Research and Innovation at the
University of Rome “La Sapienza.” She deals with cultural industries as organizational systems,
collaboration networks, and social capital. Her research and publications concern mainly cultural
crowdfunding, organizational culture, and working-related dynamics in highly innovative
environments.