Kickstarter recently announced a new collaboration with Qrates — an award-winning, one-stop service for creating and releasing vinyl records. The initiative, called MAKE Vinyl, helps music creators access more tools and resources to successfully fulfill their projects and develop their careers. Through MAKE Vinyl musicians enjoy support from the Qrates team, which has expertise in budgeting, designing, pressing, fulfilling, and distributing vinyl records. The Kickstarter Music team will help set up your projects for success with pre- and post-launch tips and if needed, feedback on your projects before they’re live.
MAKE Vinyl with Kickstarter and Qrates
How MAKE Vinyl Works
- Between now and August 1, 2017, draft a music project where at least one of your rewards is a vinyl record. Be it a 7”, 10”, or 12”, any project with vinyl as a reward will be promoted to Kickstarter’s international community of music fans.
- Once your project draft is ready, share it with us at [email protected]. Our team will review all the projects and be in touch if we have any feedback.
- Launch your project the first week of August, and when the projects are live, Kickstarter Music promotion will begin. Throughout the month, we’ll celebrate your projects and encourage our backer community to check them out.
- Projects in the MAKE Vinyl campaign can use promo code KICKSTARTER05 for a 5% discount code from Qrates to be used towards pressing and fulfilling your project.
Running a successful Music project on Kickstarter
- Media is essential to the success of Music projects. Be sure to include music. Add YouTube videos, recordings of your live shows, and embedded files from SoundCloud or Spotify. (Haven’t recorded yet? Play something live in your project video!)
- Clean, clear images — include a handful of photos that are free of logos and copy. Think: pictures of previous performances, you in the studio, or just you in your element. These projects by Felisa and W.C. Beck are great examples!
- An engaging video –– it can be serious or silly, polished or scrappy, but it’s an important way to connect with your audience, share your story — and share your music. Here are some tips for making your video.
- Outreach — confirm who your first 10 backers will be before you launch and ask each of them to share your project after they pledge. Music projects with at least 10 backers reach their funding goal 80% of the time!
- Updates — backer updates engage the people who are supporting you, and they’re a great a way to expand the reach of your campaign. Explore ideas for project updates here.
- Live streams — use Kickstarter Live to interact with your community directly from your project page.