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Now that Patreon has been around for seven years, many founders see the platform as an incumbent to be disrupted.

"When Patreon talks about how 'the system is broken,' they're talking specifically about advertising models on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram," Austin Robey, co-founder of Ampled, tells me. "When we [Ampled] talk about a system being broken, it's not just ad models — it's the whole, underlying economic operating system on which startups are built.... See more

As I've written about my own experience on Patreon, it's difficult to grow a membership page from scratch without cultivating a larger, already-existing audience elsewhere. This makes the model especially difficult for a young or emerging artist who just put up their first EP on streaming services; in these cases, a less committal Kickstarter-type ... See more

Ampled is structured as a platform cooperative, whereby all artists, fans and company workers co-own the platform on a "one-person, one-share, one-vote basis." The company's relationship with investors is also structured as "revenue-based financing" — a model in which investors inject cash into a business in exchange for a small percentage of top-l... See more

Beyond Patreon and Memberful, there are a handful of music-specific options on the market. Bandcamp allows subscriptions, but only a few labels like Topshelf Records and Tiny Engines have enabled the feature. Withfriends focuses on memberships for brick-and-mortar small businesses, and counts venues and promoters like Elsewhere and AdHoc as custome... See more

As with most other business models in music, paid membership models and closed "fan clubs" require a lot of work to execute well. Even the highest level of celebrity status does not guarantee success: In 2019, Taylor Swift and the Kardashian sisters had to shut down their own social apps, largely due to neglect.

As Patreon's own executives have explained in the past, the range of benefits musicians have offered on their platform are both tangible (e.g. merch discounts, exclusive demos or podcast episodes) and intangible (e.g. artist recognition, monthly video hangouts). A growing number of musicians also run member-only chat groups on Discord — an app that... See more

The concept of a paid, crowdfunded membership for music is nothing new. Fan clubs for pop culture have been around since the early nineteenth century, and crowdfunding in particular is at the core of musical entrepreneurship in the Internet age. One of the world's first crowdfunding sites, ArtistShare, was founded in 2001 specifically for musicians... See more

One of the major pivots the music industry has made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a shift in focus from lean-back, aggregate streaming channels (e.g. Spotify, Apple Music) to direct-to-fan channels (e.g. Bandcamp, Shopify, Patreon) where the revenue impact is more immediate and transparent. Monthly membership revenue in particular is easi... See more

That growth can only be realized through consistent investment over time. While challenging, for many artists, the payoffs in the form of direct communication with fans and predictable revenue with friendlier margins far outweigh what they would spend many more months to try to achieve through the usual avenues like streaming and free social media.