Cultural Crowdfunding Platform Capitalism, Labour And Globalization

In France, one observes diferent hierarchies according to each platform. On KissKissBankBank 5,988 musical projects were submitted, making it the most funded category with an average contribution of 54€ and a 72% success rate. On Ulule, although the musical category comes third (with 4,315 submitted projects and 16.6 million euros raised) behind social/citizenship projects and film (20.6 million; 6% and 72%). The gap between the number of projects submitted and the success rate can be explained by editorial and selective logics, as well as by the fact that some cultural categories rely on more specific and very implicated communities. As a corollary to the higher number of projects submitted, these generalist platforms attract a higher number of backers as compared to thematic and/or niche platforms (16,466,075 donors for Kickstarter, 1,665,223 ‘kissbankers’ for KissKissBankBank). They also generate projects that bring in amounts far higher than the initially requested sum.

However, both the platforms’ own figures and those of private bodies must be taken with a pinch of salt, as they are based on data that difers in terms of both space and time, making comparison dificult and perhaps impossible. Note also that only the major platforms even supply such figures. The data exhibited by these platforms serve as a communicational and promotional showcase, and testify to a demand for transparency on the part of users. But they remain difficult for the researcher to verify. This explains why we’ve had access to far more data from generalist platforms than regarding those which cater for a single specific artistic or cultural form.

3 Niche Platforms

Faced with this newly competitive market, more specific thematic and niche platforms are developing, or trying to compete, in increasingly specialised cultural sectors. These include platforms like Blue Bees (which focuses on ecological agriculture and food), Touscoprod for documentary and cinema, Sandawe for comics, the platform and label Microcultures for music, and Weezart, currently in beta form, which ofers fair revenue distribution for artists. Platforms have also emerged which are specifically dedicated to sport, like Fosburit, or religion, like Credofunding. The number of submitted and funded projects are understandably much lower, as are the total amount collected, in comparison with generalist platforms.

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Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization

With stricter and more assertive editorial selection, these platforms are (or try to be) rooted in particular communities. But within this competitive context, the lifespan of many is short, as was the case for the music platform Pro-8moi, Myartinvest, for buying art (now closed), or Touscoprod, which has been ‘integrated’ into Proarti.

4 Local Platforms

The third model is based upon the alternative value of locally situated initiatives and hence pertains to ‘local’ platforms. Since 2010 we have seen the promotion and creation of such platforms, whether general or niche. With the hope of reaching funders no longer uniquely on a family basis, local platforms have developed that are rooted in a particular region and host local projects. These include Kocoriko (Grenoble), Gwenneg (Brittany), Kengo.BZH (Brittany), J’adopteunprojet (Poitou-Charentes), and Ma Belle Tribu, started by CASDEN Banque Populaire, which aims to support ‘outstanding citizen and community initiatives in the regions’. Similar initiatives are underway in Quebec through platforms such as La Ruche and Haricot.

Certain general platforms have also taken the hint, investing in local development: Ulule, for instance, now runs ‘Ulule Tours’ in France and Quebec. Mixing cultural and community elements in this way, with the participation of public and private institutions, only confirms what was said above in regard to partnerships. For example, in 2014, the French rail company SNCF launched a project on Ulule. With the aim of safeguarding the artistic heritage of the station at Tours, SNCF Gares et Connexions partnered with the association ‘Patrimoine-Environnement’, inviting users to back the renovation of eighteen ceramic tile paintings by the artist Eugène Martial. They raised €10,381, having requested only €8,000. Platforms help blur the lines between public and private institutions, and between the responsibilities distinctive to each. At work here is a communications strategy: the desire to create a community of users, but also and above all to outsource to users and to citizens the costs of the renovation of properties that belong to them.

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5 Combined Platforms

The fourth model involves a regime of private-public interrelation. On the private side, such platforms may function on the basis of public endowments,4 for example, as is the case with Proarti, which promotes art and culture, or Dartagnans, which aims to disseminate and preserve French culture and heritage. In this case, they are supported by public initiatives ranging from certification by the Ministry of Culture to ‘aid’ given by regional and departmental authorities through local councils. The way in which they work varies, insofar as they can select which projects to support, can ofer support to them outside of a strictly economic logic, and are thus able to consider the aesthetic dimension of the project.

6 Integrated Platforms

The fifth and final model is that of the platform as a tool integrated into internal entrepreneurial strategies. Following a market logic, ‘corporate’ platforms are now being set up to improve relations between businesses and their clients. On the model of the advertising platform Eyeka, these have now become a tool developed, managed and used in corporate strategies. Oscillating between the logics of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, the platform becomes a tool for businesses which integrates pre-existing strategies. As Grosman and Brandes (2015) explain, using the example of IBM, ‘corporate’ crowdfunding enables internal collaboration and the synergising of diferent activities of the business and its staf, but it also enables bonding, competition and interaction between ‘co-workers’.

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Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization

Finally, regardless of the models developed and the strategies deployed, startup platforms have the same dependencies as the projects they help develop. Project creators depend on the investment of their community and, similarly, platforms depend on their own investors. In order to grow and develop they must carry out regular, substantial fundraising, public and private, as already analyzed in the framework of the so-called ‘collaborative’ web (Bouquillion and Matthews 2010). As a result there are uncertainties as to their future, but there is also growing competition, leading to the takeover and/or demise of platforms—as illustrated by the closure of MyMajorCompany in 2016.

The ‘Ecosystem’ as a Stimulus for Extensive Partnerships

The third point follows from the logics of intermediation created in this way. It particularly involves the search for partnerships that will allow these platforms to be integrated into the existing economic ‘ecosystem’, making them new intermediaries—which somewhat tempers, while not entirely invalidating, the idea of the alternative. If the notion of the ‘ecosystem’ resonates with both environmental issues and the core questions posed by the ‘commons’ movement, it is implemented in a wholly diferent perspective here. The ‘ecosystem’ we hear so much about must be understood in terms of a double movement of synergetic partnerships and competition driven and regulated by the market economy. The new world market, made up of a myriad of small- and medium-sized economic players linked by digital communications networks, supposedly depends on the systematization of peer-to-peer approaches in the economic domain, as well as on a hypothetical fusion between the spheres of production and consumption, as described in The World is Flat (Friedman 2005) and Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams 2006).

The partnerships forged can be of diferent types, sometimes private, sometimes public, and sometimes by way of white-labelling. They may change over time. In France, from its very beginning the platform MyMajorCompany was associated with the music label Warner, which handled its publishing and distribution. In 2010 it chose to diversify its activities by moving into literary publishing, and forged an alliance with the publisher XO. In 2011, wanting to enter the comics sector, it formed a partnership with the Belgian group Media Participations, owner of Dupuis, Dargaud and Le Lombard publishing houses, and in parallel it formed other partnerships with companies as diverse as the insurer AXA, the interiors store Habitat and the music streaming site Spotify. In 2018, KissKissBankBank announced partnerships with numerous public and private players, including La Banque Postale, the newspaper Le Parisien, a number of Chambers of Trade and Industry, and MK2 cinemas. Ulule’s partnerships are less visible, and seem instead to work by inviting local companies and collectives to function as white label products, and through targeted and branded campaigns. The UK’s number one cultural project platform, Crowdfunder (a spin-of of the equity platform Crowdcube) boasts numerous such partnerships with a range of companies including M&S, Santander, Virgin Business, AXA, JCDecaux), as well as universities and local authorities across the country.

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In all cases, the partnerships rely on players from the traditional cultural and creative industries, on local and regional authorities, as well as on associations and charity groups, hence providing a reservoir of fresh creative labour and renewing the oligopoly/fringes model—while at the same time blurring the distinction between public and private players, which is treated as unimportant in the new ‘ecosystem’. In the digital era, the principal factor in an economic player’s expansion is supposedly no longer its ability to optimize transaction costs internally, but its propensity to conduct and organize transactions on an ‘open market’ (Tapscott and Williams 2006: 56).

Despite the ‘publicizing’ of these partnerships, which promotes an image of synergy and dynamism, platforms are more discreet about their ultimate goals. Referring to Gillespie (2010), Bullich (2015) says about YouTube that platforms have an interest in playing on semantic ambiguity, revealing only those aspects of their work that present them in the best light and leaving the strategic, operational and economic dimensions in the shadow. This is done to maintain an image that is neutral and sympathetic to Internet users, and which can win over investors and partners. These platforms create an ‘alternative’ image that promotes innovation and creativity, freed from the yoke of industrial logics and their implacable financial concerns, in favour of an elsewhere that is freely chosen and over which one has full control, and where financing is a matter of choice, of sharing ideas and of love at first sight. On KissKissBankBank, partnerships advertise themselves under the philosophy of ‘Do It Yourself’ and co-creation. The partners are instead called ‘mentors’, and only their logos are shown. Other platforms like Indiegogo promote the concept of ‘DIWO’ (Do It With Others)—a gesture at the ideology of collective intelligence mentioned earlier.

Finally, if platforms are considered to be, or even legitimated as, ‘alternatives to bank lending institutions that are reluctant to invest in innovative cultural projects, they nevertheless have close links with those very institutions. There has been some degree of overlap since their creation, because banking partners and online payment services like PayPal handle transactions, claiming a percentage on each one (which varies depending on platform and payment method). For instance, Ulule has a partnership with BNP Paribas: ‘Convinced that crowdfunding and bank financing complement each other, Ulule ofers to refer you to BNP Paribas for all complementary needs relating to your entrepreneurial project financed on Ulule.’5 KissKissBankBank initially had a partnership with La Banque Postale, which went on to acquire the platform in 2017. Far from being ‘alternatives’, these apparatuses now present themselves as tools which complement existing sources of credit. Indeed, banks may agree to finance projects once they have attained the required threshold. Success in crowdfunding, supported by a community of ‘backers’, becomes a means of preliminary screening that reduces the risk of lending.

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Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization

Apparatuses for Political and Legislative Action

Private-public relations are strengthened by political involvement and the development of the legislative frameworks necessary for these platforms to expand and diversify their domains of activity. In the United States, Obama’s 2012 Jobs Act provided for regulated financial exchanges through these platforms, but also allowed them to extend the domain of their activities, for example allowing them to ofer equity or investment in companies (Cunningham 2012).

Since 2013, numerous European countries have also adopted legislation aimed both at regulating these funding methods and allowing their potential expansion to other economic sectors (Dushnitsky et al. 2016).

In France, the extension of these forms of financing to domains beyond culture only became possible with the political support of subsequent ministers for sustainable development, economy and finance, including Montebourg, Moscovici and Macron. Marine Joaun’s thesis (2017) demonstrates just how efective lobbying can be, particularly in deciding which platforms are authorised.

The ruling published in the Journal Oficiel of 31 May 2014, which regulates platforms and authorizes exemptions from financial monopoly regulations, has oficially recognised two specialized types of platforms:

• Loan platforms which finance diverse (often ‘community-based’ or ‘entrepreneurial’) projects via free or paid-for credit, collectively agreed by contributors-lenders.

• Investment platforms which primarily specialize in funding ‘entrepreneurial’ projects by issuing equity or debt securities, and whose reward for contributors-subscribers is a share in the potential profits of the project.

Finally, the importance of political backing can also be seen in France’s promotion of heritage and cultural production by introducing special measures for crowdfunded projects. The most important of these are tax reductions for individuals and companies if their project is non-profit (with charitable status) or heritage-related.

Although digital activities potentially ofer these platforms international visibility, we should note that, in reality, they are subject to national laws and regulations. The first platforms, representatives of the devolved modalities of the web, aimed at an international scale—the web being, in the minds of its creators, a network without borders. And yet, beyond all the talk, this internationalist dimension still depends on international and bilateral agreements between the countries concerned, as well as individual states’ fiscal policies (VAT, income tax, copyright, consumers’ rights). And no matter the country, project creators are legally subject to tax. Although legislation is often vague and not always strictly applied, the sums obtained when funding is successful can be considered revenue. As shown in the recommendations of the report ‘Crowdfunding Schemes in Europe’ (Rothler and Wenzlaf 2011), approaches in Europe still depend on the legislation of each member state, and remain to be harmonized.

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It is therefore easy to understand the eforts made by these platforms and a number of private and/or public initiatives to inform legislators and the public, and so create national and international synergies in order to internationalize and globalize the ‘ecosystem’. This is the case, for example, with the research carried out in the framework of the European Union funded CrowdFunding4Culture (http://www.crowdfunding4culture.eu), piloted by the private consultancy Idea Consult. The aim of this was to propose the development and, above all, the harmonization of these platforms at a European level. Similar initiatives have also been set up in the countries of the ‘South’. In Africa, for example, the South African based ACfA (African Crowdfunding Association), created in 2015, aims to unify the activities of the continent’s platforms and to remove the legislative barriers preventing monetary exchanges in or among other African countries.

The relationship between crowdfunding and politics depends on the use made of it by parties, unions and certain politicians. Use of these platforms or apparatuses typically brings up debates around their place in the participative democracy movement. We will discuss two distinct examples. The first—often cited by the high priests of cyberspace and other apologists for digital progress as a reference case for the ‘revolutions’ made possible by digital technologies—is the use of such funding in Obama’s first presidential campaign. In 2008, Obama appealed to the generosity of his supporters to partly fund his campaign, raising \$150 million. But this was only a tiny part of the total, and exponential, cost of the campaign. In this first case, crowdfunding served more as a showcase and a communications operation, rather than having any significant impact on the ‘democratic experience’. A second example, closer to home, took place in March 2018. On the initiative of the sociologist Jean-Marc Salmon, supported by twenty or so artists and intellectuals, an appeal for donations was launched on the ‘money pot’ site Leetchi to set up a strike fund to support the continuation of the movement against SNCF reforms. By 18 May 2018, 28,907 donors had given €1,132,001. This second example highlights all the ambiguities of the apparatus. Although it enabled financial support for political opposition, it also contributed indirectly to the development of the very same liberal economic logics that workers were fighting against.

Platforms as Technical Apparatuses

As we have stated above, the element that characterizes this type of platform is the establishment of a technical apparatus, in the sense defined by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2009). Crowdfunding platforms are above all a matter of coding. They are carefully planned out before going live, giving users access to services and to a particular organization of information. Without revisiting the large quantity of debate and research on the relations between techniques and uses, one should recall that coding intervenes upstream of content and the participation of project creators and backers. Platforms for cultural finance determine the framework for their automated services, from registering on the site to participating as a project creator, a contributor of ideas and knowledge or a backer. In doing so, the platforms establish how they will function (Flichy 2008): they must be ergonomic, intuitive and easy to use. It can be very damaging, for instance, if it takes too many clicks to reach the required information or to make a payment, as this discourages backers from finalizing their donation. The platforms also aggregate and exploit user data (partly visible on the statistics pages the platforms provide) and develop dedicated APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which allow the platform, for example, to run as white label products on other businesses’ sites.

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Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization

Algorithmic automation is also at work in content promotion on the site— for instance, which projects are featured will vary depending on the viewer’s tastes and location. As apparatuses, these platforms make information and content visible while selecting material according to prior editorial decisions. By promoting certain projects on their homepage or personalizing what they show users depending on their actions on the site, they contribute to the hierarchization of information and reinforce competition between projects.

Like any apparatus, platforms legally establish and normalize administrative procedures (General Terms and Conditions of Use) and the relations between players who will subsequently interact according to a logic of ‘coinnovation’. The sociologist Emile Gayoso (2015) remarks that: co-innovation platforms work on both sides at once (innovation, management and marketing) and in this sense give us a privileged vantage point on the re-embedding of business within society which, as managerial injunction but also as structural necessity, has taken shape in the Western world following the crisis of the 70s, with the growth of the ‘networked business’ and of ‘management by project’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999), and finds in the Internet a powerful catalyst.

Platforms for Artists and Creation?

‘Free your creativity’, declares the participative platform KissKissBankBank. Kickstarter’s homepage is emblazoned with the words ‘Discover creative projects’. Patreon ofers to help you ‘regain your creative freedom’, while the British platform PledgeMusic has described itself as ‘a unique marketplace where fans and artists connect’. Given such slogans, it is no wonder the media, politicians, as well as many other social actors, appear to be infatuated with crowdfunding. These words, and the platforms which produce them, are symptomatic of current discourse on the digital economy, inviting ‘creatives’ to participate, to mobilize communities and to revitalize project funding and, more globally, culture itself.

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The confusion between the terms ‘creation’, ‘creativity’ and ‘projects’ are symptomatic of the creative industries (Tremblay 2010; Hesmondhalgh 2008) and their attempts to create value by evacuating the aesthetic and artistic issues distinctive to artistic creation, instead emphasizing individual creativity as an end in itself. Crowdfunding platforms posit themselves as new cultural intermediaries, opening the way to new possibilities for ‘supporting creation’. The issue here is the valorization of ‘making’ without the need for any kind of ‘knowing’, and the celebration of creativity to the detriment of any aesthetic or theoretical considerations.

In music, literature and cinema, the discourses circulated by project creators reinforce this positioning, both through the attention they pay to these logics and the way they represent them. We see an example of this with the following author, who submitted a book project to a French platform:

At first I sent my manuscript to publishing houses, but with hindsight I can see that was never going to work. They looked at the style first of all, and it’s true, it wasn’t good enough. I tried again with a second manuscript, and this time I got more notes. But still they told me that it didn’t fit into their current publication priorities. A friend told me about this platform, and I tried signing up. I don’t know much about it, but I said to myself, why not. (T, 27 years old, book project)

Another user proposed an album:

I saw it [financial participation] as a funding method which meant you could get a project going which just wouldn’t happen by traditional routes. I saw it as a form of funding in advance. (T, 25 years old, music project)

Most of those we spoke to saw these platforms in this way, as potential means to finance and complete their projects, with various possible alterations depending on the pledges received.

Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to work. I didn’t think people would be willing to give like that. I told myself I’d give it a try, and I reached my goal in a week! [The target was €2,000.] If I’d have known, I’d have asked for €10,000! [...] In actual fact, I got more than that. It’ll be enough for me to make more projects, a bigger book, a larger print run. (F, 32 years old, book project)

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Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization

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)

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