I'm pretty happy with how Kingfisher sounds at this point: with fifteen gigs since dances restarted and eight in the last six months I feel like our playing has gelled a lot. I've been recording our dances and listening back there's a lot of good stuff. Which has me wondering about making a live album, But how do people do that these days now that interest in buying CDs at dances is much lower?
I've been seeing bands doing Kickstarters for their albums, in a way that seems a lot like a pre-sale? (Ex: Great Bear, Buddy System, Pete's Posse, Nova, etc.) Aside from Kickstarter taking a cut (~9%) are there downsides to the platform? Anyone have good or bad experiences to share?
(In 2012 when the Free Raisins made a live cd (details, economics) we picked our favorite sets as a band and then Audrey (who is also a recording engineer) edited them down to listening length. We printed physical copies to sell at dances, and also put it on bandcamp for people who wanted downloads. By 2014 when we made our second CD (details, economics) people were starting to buy fewer CDs, but since a lot of people drive to dances and have CD players in their cars we broke even with 483 sales in the first sixteen months. We also used CD Baby to make the album available on streaming platforms (ex: Spotify, YouTube Music) which has been bringing in about $100/y. Which isn't nothing but also wouldn't be enough to fund even the mixing for an album.)