Oh dear, Public Enemy's attempts to fund their next album project through fan investment hasn't really worked.
 
As previously reported, Chuck D et al's decision to go this route via the Sellaband website was initially seen as a sign the fan funding model was coming of age but, despite a flurry of fans pledging money for the project shortly after the venture was announced, by December the band had only raised $71,000; a sizable sum of money, but a long way off the $250,000 the hip hop outfit hoped to raise. Not only that, but according to Billboard the amount pledged to the group has now fallen, so that it currently stands at $67,400 - ie some previous fan funding pledgers have withdrawn their offer.
 
There have, of course, been some success stories from the fan funding domain in recent months, which made Billboard's Glenn Peoples wonder why the Public Enemy effort failed. He reckons that $250,000 may have been an overly ambitious target to start with, and that the middle-priced investment options didn't offer enough premium benefits to be attractive. Given that the only benefit to come with a $250 investment that didn't also come with a $100 one was a free t-shirt, many might have wondered why they should invest the extra $150.

He adds: "Marketing appears to have been another problem. The group needed to sustain the project's initial momentum, but Public Enemy's updates at Sellaband and funds from investors slowed to a crawl by December. One downside of the service is Sellaband does not have tools to market outside of the Sellaband ecosystem. Without the ability to create and manage email and social networking campaigns from within Sellaband, extra effort is required to reach potential investors".
 
You can read the full article here. It raises some interesting points that probably show that while the Public Enemy Sellaband venture's failure doesn't mean the fan-funding proposition is a none-starter, it does offer some interesting lessons for established artists thinking of going this route. I'm sure the guys at newer fan-funding platform Pledge would say their system addresses most of these issues, and I think they'd be right to do so.