Early career artists and the exchange of gifts on a crowdfunding platform

Abstract

This article undertakes the analysis of crowdfunding as an activity combining aspects of the exchange of gifts and of commodity exchange. Based on empirical research – 30 interviews conducted with artists using the MegaTotal platform – we demonstrate that completing projects on that platform requires building relationships with a group of the most active users of the platform. Moreover, on the basis of the answers provided by contributors, we show that motives such as participation in the production of culture and deciding what kind of product will make its appearance on the market is what is important to them. Both parties are coupled by the mechanisms of gift exchange and the flow of money.

Notes

1. Quotes have been translated from the original Polish. The list of respondents (the names of groups and stage names) and the dates of the interviews may be found in the Appendix 1. However, in order to guarantee the privacy of the interviewees, the quotations used in the article are anonymous.

2. In other words, on Kickstarter, rewards take the form of both album pre-sales (if a contributor donates a small amount) and ‘gifts’ – for example handwritten sheet music (when a donation is larger), while on MegaTotal majority of rewards have character of ‘gifts’, regardless of the size of donation.