Leseranalyse zum Wintersun-Crowdfunding
Immer schön, wenn man sich mal eine kleine Pause gönnen kann. Für die nächsten paar Absätze übernimmt deshalb Leser und Soziologiestudent Alexander Hutzel, der uns seine verschriftlichten Gedanken zum kürzlich recht erfolgreichen Wintersun-Crowdfunding zukommen ließ. Danke dafür. Wintersun verfolgten mit der Aktion das Ziel, ein eigenes Studio zu finanzieren, um besser für künftige Alben gerüstet zu sein. Aber das erfahrt ihr ohnehin gleich nochmal alles im Artikel. Ist recht lang geworden, lohnt aber zu lesen.
WHY DID THE WINTERSUN CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN WORK THAT WELL?
Some sociological thoughts
The Finnish metal band Wintersun collected 463.930 € with their first crowdfunding campaign within March and April 2017. According to the platform Indiegogo.com that is 285 % of the original goal of 150.000 euros. They offered the so-called forest package to their fans which included a new album, remastered versions of the previous albums and some more content like isolated tracks, a live album and a bonus track. The goal is to build an own studio to produce the future albums in a proper way. This will cost 750,000 €.
As someone who is trained in sociological thinking, the question why did this work so well? came up quick. Therefore, I’m trying to seek some reasons for this very successful campaign which does not mean I figured the whole thing out. I should work on my master thesis right now, but this question kept my brain occupied for weeks. So, I need to get it out.
Foundation
People like to be entertained. Music has always been a form of art and expression but nowadays you can easily add the function of entertainment. According to the philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, music is a product which is produced industrially, there to serve as a sedative for the masses. So, music is a product that needs to be sold in a productive way, which reduces the original functions of expression from an artist. In the case of Wintersun, the art of expression is the main goal and to reach this goal, the band saw the need for an own recording studio. This ambitious goal had to be delivered with a story, quality, transparency and a clearly structured process.
After the bands wearing history with their label Nuclear Blast they saw the need for a new approach to start some positive development. The label agreed to their crowdfunding idea and is only involved by selling the new album the forest seasons physically. So here is the first answer to our question: The label agreed to this new approach, knowing that they would have the right to sell the album on CD and so on.
Wintersun delivered quality to their fans in different ways, which is the second reason for the success. Quality means that they produced two highly valued albums and gained a die-hard fan base. The progressive-metal band Disillusion had some similar success with only to albums and they also started a crowdfunding campaign that worked out very well. Wintersun is also an outstanding live experience of which they reminded the fans right from the start of the campaign.
The word quality was used by the band a lot during the phase of preparing the fans for the oncoming campaign. Quality at the production of the album, a high-quality booklet, best quality of the future albums and so on. So, the band had a feeling for getting their quality-thinking into the heads of the fans, by repeating it within every Facebook- posting, every video message and every interview they gave. Quality might be the best word to describe the forest package content.
Nowadays we are used to high quality audio, video and live-experiences in the music scene. But Wintersun made clear, that they aim for higher quality and standards which seems to have convinced a lot of fans. The content of the package is also interesting for musicians because of the isolated tracks of all albums.
The structure of the campaign was clear and transparent, which is important for the following fans. When reading the comments on the videos (YouTube and Facebook) it became clear, that the videos became day-to-day structural for a lot of people. A clear indicator for the connection the band could establish between them and their fans. How this connection was build up will be discussed later.
With the announcement of the new album, the campaign and the search for a new guitarist, the band gained a lot of attention. Attention is kind of a currency of the 21. Century and Wintersun had a lot of it within the last years, especially through the dispute with their label. Even negative attention is attention. Through music websites, Facebook and YouTube the idea of the campaign was discussed in a diverse way. From full-fanboy/girl to absolute hater, a lot of people participated in the discourse and with regards to the outcome, Wintersun profited from it.
People like to be part of something and Wintersun satisfied this need in three different ways. First, being part of a community is essential for humans and as a metal fan it is easy to become a Wintersun fan. Becoming a fan of something is not challenging because it doesn’t take anything. It (could be religion too) must be attractive to this person and there are a lot of reasons to be a fan of good music. Participating on concerts and dressing up like you are part of the scene is enough to feel as an individual in a community of shared interests. Another example for these cohesive feelings generated through a shared interest is the crowdfunding campaign for Mike Scheidt who is the singer and guitarist of the Doom Metal Band YOB. After surgery, the band raised enough money for him to go through rehab without drowning in debt.
Secondly, Wintersun claimed to start something historically by conduct the biggest crowdfunding in metal history. No matter what one might think of the final goal, the way they did it made it the success they wanted it to be. There is no doubt that they will reach the final goal of 750,000 € for building the Wintersun Headquarters. So, being part of something historically is attractive to a lot of people.
Thirdly, the band connected with their fans in a constant way. One could observe this mostly on Facebook, where the band was active in the commenting section and had an overall high reaction to personal messages. In sociology, this is called: Someone must state the obvious. If you want money from your fans you obviously must get in touch with them and reach out via interviews.
So, these reasons were, I assume, the foundation of the successful campaign. Now let’s have a look on the realisation of the crowdfunding.
Execution
The band started a Hype Month by putting out information about the campaign every day and share videos of the development of the album a few times a week. So, the first effect of this meta-hyping is that people are pleasantly prepared for the oncoming information. Before that, Wintersun made some announcements by the end of 2016 that 2017 a lot of things will happen. I will call this pre-teasing. It can be said, that there where three stages of teasing before the campaign started: Pre-teasing in 2016, teasing in January 2017 and finally the Hype Month in February 2017. The band handled that three stages with some good irony, which is always helpful to deal with upcoming criticism.
Teasing has some effects that I will try to describe in the following. First it is obviously the sharing of information about some topic in which people are interested in. Secondly it can raise the attention of those who did not have any interest in this topic through sharing the information viral and on social media (in this case basically Facebook). Thirdly, and this is the most important effect, teasing can create a thrill among the fans. In the case of Wintersun the fans had been waiting a very long time for positive news and that made anticipation of the campaign easier.
By putting out the documentary about the new album and the campaign one by one, the band managed to keep the factors attention and entertainment on a constantly high level. In the videos one could often see and hear very catchy parts of the new album, which also benefits the factors mentioned above.
To document a creative process on video seems to be a new standard in the music business for the last years. You can find a lot of examples online. Wintersun delivered almost full insights into the process of their DIY album. Here it is important to say that this documentary only creates the feeling of transparency and therefore can not be transparency as a fact. The band named the clear goal and presented the cold math behind their thoughts. 15000 fans * 50 € = studio. Simple. They named the reason for the goal of building the studio which must have had an positive impact on the community in overall.
The wording of this campaign is also interesting, because the band named the same central terms repeatedly. It was brainwashing in a way with terms that suite the band in a proper way: "epic", "true vision", "quality", "faster future production of albums", "win-win-win situation", "massive" and so on. That had two important effects. First, the band repeated and established what could be trademarks of Wintersun. The term epic is a good example for that. Secondly the wording of the campaign was often referring to the band and community together as a we. This is important to see because a we can do this together is more helpful that a you pay our studio. Creating a feeling of cohesiveness can therefore be viewed as a central aspect of this campaign.
Another important aspect of the language used in the campaign is humor. The band basically used humor in three major ways. First, they established some running gags during the crowdfunding. By always repeating the 5K quality of the booklet and the 4K quality of the videos, some Facebook commentators got annoyed by it and criticised the band. They reacted with a self-ironic meme, which is a proper way to deal with criticism and creates sympathy. During the documentary, Wintersun had more running gags like having only ONE beer after work or we got the money-shot during their photo sessions. For the future, everyone who participated in the crowdfunding, will know what is meant by potential references to this running gags what could also establish a feeling of togetherness.
Honesty was another positive factor of the campaign. The band created the feeling of total honesty (together with transparency) by telling their story and their struggles from the past. Just to create this feeling is enough, no matter if they where actually honest or not. In post-factual times people crave for honesty and support it with emotional and monetary support. People want honesty and emotionalism, because it feels real. And everything what feels reals makes us feel alive.
They helped to establish this emotional connection through emotional insights from their private life. The self-proclaimed introvert lead singer Jari Mäenpää talked about the death of his father and how it affected him. He also talked about the depressive and long winters in Finland.
On the other hand, he went on talking about the inspirational process for the forest seasons album. By walking through a forest near his hometown the inspiration came to him. People like to hear inspirational stories with genius moments. That’s why movies like Good Will Hunting or A Beautiful Mind where successful. This story, may it be true or not, is a good narrative to serve the need for special entertainment.
People are part of something outstanding if they fund the band's studio, which is maybe the key message of the campaign. To finally answer the main question: It worked that well, because the campaign was realised professionally, honestly, transparently and with high quality content.
von Alexander Hutzel
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