30 November 2010

Omar wants your money

| johnboy
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There are many ways down at heel musicians raise money to produce CDs.

Some sell t-shirts, others play more gigs, and then there’s always the grant route.

But Canberra’s gift to hip hop, Omar Musa is more direct. He just wants you to give him money.

In October, 2010, Mighty Joe and I completed a hugely successful Indonesian tour and decided to form an international hip-hop duo named MoneyKat. We have been sporadic collaborators since we met at university in Santa Cruz, California, and this tour confirmed to us that we have a special musical partnership. We have very different styles, accents and tones but are focused on bringing soulful, personal, socially conscious and poetic hip-hop to ears and minds. If you look at the footage of our tour below, I am sure you will agree.

As you might also know, life can be tough for independent musicians, especially in terms of creating world class product on a small budget. We are determined to record an album in California and Seattle, USA, and thought this online fundraiser would be an organic way of helping fund the album (studio time, hiring musicians, production, mastering etc). Whether you contribute $1 or $1000 (!), every little bit is appreciated. We truly believe that we have something special here and with your help will be able to create an amazing and unique album.

Help us fuel the fire! Much love,

-Omar Musa

To be fair there are some pretty cool rewards there if one donates sizable sums.

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Mr Lubberlubber8:05 pm 30 Nov 10

It must have been fantastic for him to get all that exposure to the crowds at Foreshore over the weekend and I wish him all the luck in turning that into contributions from the 18,000 potential new fans he got the opportunity to perform in front of.

Hang on, isn’t this the guy who agreed to perform at Foreshore for free and then when up on stage started dissing the Foreshore organisers for not paying him to be there. He might have read a couple of chapters out of a marketing book, but methinks he skimmed the more important ones. he better make the most of his exposu this year, because I can’t see him coming back next year unless he turns himself into a headline act.

I had mates in Melbourne who put out a flyer to fans at their gigs asking for $10 as a preorder for their yet-to-be-recorded CD, which would give them the capital to then record it. Seemed a bit cheeky at the time, but I think they got a decent contribution out of it, and they did send the CD out to subscribers as promised when it was ready!

How are you supposed to become a proper artist without the proper degree of suffering, though?

Crowd funding through sites like fundbreak or IndieGoGo has become pretty commonplace for lower-budgeted indie projects. If you like the artist, you can end up with bragging rights if they make it big 😉

It’s not really that different to the way these sort of projects used to be funded, except now you’re knocking on virtual doors asking for money, rather than physical ones

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