Patreon
Groundbreaking and exciting model for fan monetization
Reasonable 9% fee
Large and rapidly growing fan community
Easy to understand & use
Incredible fan retention
We wish there were better discovery tools
It's harder than it looks to create this much content
Patreon is an incredible platform for musicians seeking to monetize the direct fan-artist relationship with regular content updates.
Patreon’s motto of “empowering a new generation of content creators” is actually quite apt. Perhaps than any other crowdfunding platform, they get that the future is in monetizing the fan-artist relationship.
The model behind Patreon is totally unique among crowdfunding platforms. For example, let’s say you’re a musician (because you probably are). You put up your Patreon profile with a pitch for creating a simple music video once every other month. Every time you post a video, you get a tip from each fan subscribing to your Patreon account. The subscriber sets their own tip amount, as well as a maximum budget to ensure they don’t go over if a musician releases 10 videos of artistic silence or whatever.
Similar to “traditional” crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, you can offer rewards to entice greater tip amounts.
Patreon will take approximately 9% (giving about 4% up for payment processing), which is on the more reasonable side of commissions for musician platforms.
