{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","title":"Cultural Crowdfunding Platform Capitalism, Labour And Globalization","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","id":"171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","uuid":"171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","title":"Cultural Crowdfunding Platform Capitalism, Labour And Globalization","normalized_title":"culturalcrowdfundingplatformcapitalismlabourandglobalization","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":128,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Cultural%20Crowdfunding%20Platform%20Capitalism%2C%20Labour%20And%20Globalization","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960/search"},"page":{"printed_page":86,"pdf_page":94,"physical_index":94,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"868ae9cf255a6a94b03e67342506deedff9957988dc440e0f22f2307a71159fa"},"chapter":"Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization","content":"In Senegal and Burkina Faso we interviewed a number of musicians who had used platforms based in France (Ulule, KissKissBankBank) to finance the production of albums aiming at niche ‘world music’ markets. In these cases, the campaigns had been successful because the artists already had a ‘market in France’. One interviewee in Senegal explained the success of such campaigns (and, in contrast, the limits of crowdfunding for cultural projects on potential national or pan-African platforms):\n\nIt isn’t something we’d be afraid of doing, but it’s just that it may be a bit early for it. In any case, I see artists trying to do something on Facebook because it’s true that it the sector is a little neglected. In France it’s diferent, artists like Grégoire are crowdfunded, but here people don’t take the risk because money is complicated here. People don’t talk about it, they are incapable of defining what they expect to make.\n\nThis is an interesting remark, invoking one of the ‘mythical figures’ of crowdfunding, Grégoire: the success of that particular campaign (and the ‘expectations’ in terms of the funds that could be raised) had been carefully prepared and orchestrated by the platform MyMajorCompany well ahead of its launch, in particular by signing a publishing contract beforehand with the distributor Warner Music France. Not that this matters: the same myth of quasi-organic crowdfunding in the West, which will inevitably ‘trickle down’ to the South, is expressed by Ken Aicha Sy (a member of the collective Wakh’Art, which led a fruitful crowdfunding campaign). He unhesitatingly places music production, healthcare application development, and a very specific context of work organization on the same plane:\n\nEspecially in music, there are so many artists who use these sites to fund foreign tours and records, those who have a following abroad ask their audience for help. I think it’s because there is a demand that young people develop a distinctive ofer, and then the more that ofer is developed, the more it will be suited to people’s needs. For example, I’ve met people who make applications for healthcare here in Senegal, I know social entrepreneurs in the prison system who use it to enable their work with prisoners. Once the platforms exist, demand will grow, and today we’re a country with 8 million people connected to the Internet, there are 14 million Senegalese, so it’s a big market.\n\nAlongside these positively motivated users of the platforms, we also met numerous cultural workers who seemed overcome by the obstacles they met when setting up a social financing campaign. They were often eager to get started and already users of networks for information and computer technology, but were held back either by the everyday business of ‘survival’ or by other timeconsuming and financially indispensable work. This is the case of an Ethiopian engineer, Getnet Asefa, the founder of IcogLabs. He launched an unsuccessful campaign on Indiegogo to finance an educational project involving artificial intelligence. According to him, the attempt failed principally because he lacked the time necessary for preparing and promoting the campaign, since he was busy with accounting and financial data management tasks outsourced to his ‘laboratory’ by Australian companies. Here the limitations of the enthusiastic discourses become quite clear: stories of successful project creators are the exception, and campaigns are marked by vicissitudes and obstacles that were underestimated at the outset. The Afrikaner protest musician Koos Kombuis emphasizes this, based on his experience with Jumpstarter:\n\n86\n\nCultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization","previous_page":85,"next_page":87}