But this logic is far less certain in the case of crowdfunding. The problematic of gift and counter-gift is prominent once more, but in a very diferent form to that highlighted by Mauss. The name and figure of the project’s creator play a fundamental role in crowdfunding platforms, providing a way of managing and/or creating a sense of proximity. Here, the gift is above all financial. Only the counter-gift recalls the original nature of the principle, since it is given by project creators in the form of ‘rewards’ allocated according to the amount pledged. Depending on the platform, this remuneration may, for example, come in the form of a free concert, a copy of the album with a dedication (for a musical project), or numbered prints (in the case of photography projects). These cases are more like forms of pre-purchase (Kappel 2009).
The issue for these platforms is to ofer an original experience embedded within an economic approach, integrating the process within industrial strategies that ultimately lead to acts of consumption (whether anticipated or not). The processes of intermediation we explore in the next chapter link together creators, platforms and industrial players (from cultural or other sectors). They also make it possible to limit the financial risk inherent to cultural production, while allowing for a better match between the personalized, segmented demands of consumers and the potential diversity ofered by creators. Creation and participation can be integrated into industrial strategies in the name of shared experience and registers of ‘attention’. The notion of experience here therefore also refers, implicitly, to an experiment (expérience) in the scientific sense: provoking a specific phenomenon in order to observe it and draw a set of rules—a ‘systematic logic’, as Husserl calls it. Such observation led to the establishment of the first platforms with cultural aims, whose purpose was to comprehend the system and extend it to other economic sectors. In this sense, the experiential/experimental logics of collaborative financing and production, the research on motivation cited in the introduction, and algorithms and data, all contribute to the emergence of new strategies of control which we examine further in chapter 3.
Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding: The Origins of a New System?
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