Kickstarter is a American crowdfunding website where projects can be financed. It’s a useful social media if someone wants to develop a project but is not possible to because of the lack of money. If a student wants to make a short film he can start a Kickstarter account and try to gather money by letting other people donate some money. This way the poor student can achieve his dream of making a film.
It is ofcourse very important to have a significant amount of followers or an attractive cause. Celebrities also use kickstarter to develop their personal projects. An example is the actor Zach Braff from Scrubs who wanted to direct a movie called ”Wish you were here”. For this movie he needed 2 million dollars for the production and achieved his goal in 3 days with Kickstarter.
Another example is the girlgroup TLC. This group was huge in the 90’s and very popular. Since 2003 they haven’t released any music but as of January 2015 they asked their fans on social media to contribute and donate money for their final album. They needed 150.000 dollars and achieved their goal in three days.
A lot of people seem to think that this is a very selfish way to finance your project via kickstarter. Especially when celebrities do it. Celebrities ask their fans to donate money on their social media pages like Twitter and/or Facebook.
Zach Braff has a net worth of 22 million dollars and the girlgroup TLC has sold over 60 million albums worldwide. People ask why they need their fans to finance their projects while they don’t seem to have any money problems. How is that?
A news article by Angela Watercutter explains why people get annoyed at celebrities on kickstarter.In this article she explains that people think you have a lot of money they’re going to ask why you’re asking them for more. And she explains that there will always be backlash.
What do you guys think? Do you think celebrities should use kickstarters or should they just finance their projects themselves? Leave a comment 😉
Why People Get Annoyed at Celebrities on Kickstarter (And Why They Probably Shouldn’t)
I think raising money on Kickstarters is a very clever thing to do, also for celeberties. Because it is not only an easy way to make money, it is also a way to get attention and to see if people are intersted in the product/movie/album you want to create. If a celeberty want to create a movie, he can spend money on it and make the movie. But if nobody is intersted in the movie, he spent all his money for nothing.
And people may say it is unfair when celeberties, with enough money, raise money to fund their project. But i disagree. If there are people who want their idol to succeed with making an album of shooting a movie, they should be able to fund money, at least it is their money.
I think it’s good that some celebrities use crowdfunding to fund something like a movie or an album. But I think the people that have donated money should get something in return, like free cinema tickets to see the movie or a copy of the album, depending on the amount they donated. However, I also understand why people think celebrities should fund their own projects. At the end, he/she will still make profit from the project, so he might as well invest some of his own money in it. However, this is a big risk. But, as Naomi already mentioned, crowdfunding is also a great way to see if people are actually interested in such a movie, and if so, how many people are interested.