The Artists’ Critique on Crowdfunding and Online Gift-Giving

Abstract

Crowdfunding is known as a funding solution for creative projects. Creators and business ventures consider crowdfunding as an outlet for promoting creative projects and raising funds. The literature and the media coverage overemphasized its benefits without taking into account key limitations for specific sectors. Based on exploratory, qualitative data gathering, this article investigates what artists expect from crowdfunding and what results from their successful engagement with this funding model. The findings organized in three sequential moments (pre-campaign, during and after) revealed that artists see crowdfunding as a contingent funding resort when other preferred methods are unavailable (subsidies, sponsorship, or labor market opportunities). While expecting to enter markets, artists remain restricted to their social networks, thus reaching successful, yet low funding targets. Artists report that the “investments” in their work resemble gift-giving practices of a costly nature. We interpret these findings as the result of a relative difficulty to reach out to other audiences and match one’s expectations with this funding model.