- A History Legitimated by the Internet
In an article that proposes a ‘brief history of crowdfunding’, the American researchers David Freedman and Matthew Nutting (2015) situate the birth of the crowdfunding system in the US, prior to the emergence of the aforementioned dedicated platforms. They argue that the phenomenon emerged in 2004 on the platform Artistshare with the jazz musician Maria Schneider. Following a call for backers via this platform, Schneider succeeded in raising \$130,000 to produce a new album, which won a Grammy Award in 2005. Crowdfunding was born in the music sector—so often a pioneer in the metamorphosis of the so-called ‘creative’ industries. Kappel (2009) documents the many initiatives in operation, dividing them into two financing models (the ‘betting model’ and the ‘investing model’). Slicethepie (UK) finances bands and musicians on the betting model. Sellaband.com (UK) and Bandstock.com (the Netherlands), both founded in 2006, instead developed the ‘investment’ approach, and are the forerunners of today’s crowdfunding platforms.
We might situate the birth of crowdfunding even earlier, with the innovative initiative of British prog-rock band Marillion, who in 1997 launched a pre-sale of their album on their website, successfully raising \$60,000 to finance a US tour.
Other researchers, including Flannery (2006), locate the birth of crowdfunding in 2006, with the website Kiva. Following Maguire (2013), the French management science researchers Méric, Jardat, Mairesse and Brabet (2016) note that the first use of the term ‘crowdfunding’ goes back to August 2006, on the blog of Michael Sullivan, in reference to his project ‘Fundavlog’: ‘Many things are important factors, but funding from the “crowd” is the base on which all else depends on and is built on. So, crowdfunding is an accurate term to help me explain this core element of Fundavlog’.
In tracing the history of crowdfunding by way of the Internet, the aim is to place it in the ideological lineage of the free and participative, DIY nature of its precursors. This involved a mobilization of the community in the service of furthering knowledge, and a common culture proper to the Internet (open source movements, the first bulletin board systems, and more broadly speaking the alternative technology movements that appeared over the course of the 1970s).
Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding: The Origins of a New System?
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