Our qualitative study (including both citizens who had participated in or financed a project, and those who had not) further supported the idea that crowdfunding platforms help ensure cultural diversity.
Projects on these platforms are not dependent on the restrictive, pyramidal selection logics of cultural industries. At first sight, they therefore seem less subject to economic or aesthetic demands, and free from the pressure of institutional sponsors and backers. Remember that most of those who pledge money to a project have a direct link of some sort to the project creator, either as family or friends, and usually do not monitor the production and development of the project carefully. This absence of control is counterbalanced by the ‘exclusive’ rewards which backers receive, and which are dependent on the amount they pledge. Our research shows that the projects proposed—and the desires of the creators themselves—typically do not aim at novelty or aesthetic experimentation, but rather the success of the campaign and the satisfaction of a personal pleasure, the symbolic achievement of ‘having done it’ (Flichy 2010). Note that the issues are somewhat diferent for project creators who are not entirely amateur. The alternative on ofer is to fund a project without getting involved in commercial, professional and contractual logics—instead, one can take an alternative, DIY approach. This last point is essential, for this is how project creators can guarantee control of the object financed, as well as associated rights:
I wanted to make something good. Why bring it out as a CD? Personally, I never buy CDs, unless I buy them after a concert I enjoyed. That’s the kind of spirit I started the project with, not in the spirit of a distributor like Harmonia Mundi or Naive who was going to distribute it … I did it for myself, to have something to distribute to people who come to see me and sometimes ask if they can buy a CD. (V, musical project creator, 35 years old)
Far from an Alternative: Intermediation Apparatuses
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