Dempsey: “What value do we assign to art?” around crowdfunding

Music journalists Mikey Cahill and Marcus Teague discuss with Paul Dempsey how Kaiit's GoFundMe appeal creates an interesting dynamic for the value of artist's work.

With COVID-19 ruining major sources of revenue, Something for Kate lead singer and guitarist Paul Dempsey believes online subscription services and crowdfunding are new ways forward for many artists.

Something for Kate has always been known, as likened by Hit Different host Mikey Cahill, as “everybody’s band”, but their move to put extra content on subscription services like Patreon has been a great success for eager fans and the future of the Aussie band.

“We had been looking for a way to share this ridiculous mountain of stuff that we were sitting on – we’ve got more than 25 years’ worth of live recordings, rehearsal room recordings and other audio and visual stuff that we had been wanting to find a way to share with people,” Dempsey told Cahill and Marcus Teague on Hit Different.

“Then we started thinking we should share some of this with people, but it’s also a way that assigns some value to it.”

“We liked the idea of building a little community around it, it’s not a tiered thing and we’re not trying to create tiered memberships or VIP levels.”

Something for Kate recently uploaded hours of their additional content, including B-side recordings and behind the scenes shoots, to a personal Patreon page, where any subscriber can pay $10 per month to receive this stream of audio and video.

It echoes the recent news from neo-soul and future R&B star Kaiit, who created a GoFundMe to crowdsource money so she could get out of her record contract with Alt Dot music. The efforts have currently raised over $60 thousand, with Aussie performers Tones and I and Tash Sultana publicly supporting Kaiit’s move despite the performer not offering any content in return for donations.

The move to not offer anything in return was the major point of intrigue for Cahill and Teague, with the latter saying it was a sign of the current times courtesy of the coronavirus pandemic.

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We covered it on Hit Different, a weekly podcast that puts music culture in context.

“There’s usually a give and take, but interestingly, it’s shown that there are people willing to put forward cash just to support someone and to help them follow their dreams or continue their career,” Teague said.

“I don’t know now whether that’s an old mentality to think you have to offer something for that support, or whether in this day and age it’s enough to say I need help, can anyone help me out?”.

“If she (Kaiit) gets to make music for another year because of that, or even beyond, then good on her, it’s just that I’ve not seen someone do it without offering their own services in return.”

Something for Kate’s move to Patreon was done without any strategic or financial planning, as Dempsey instead sought to find a place he could offload the mountains of content the band had backlogged. A consideration Dempsey didn’t think would come with the start of their own Patreon page was a philosophical consideration that’ll plague many artists in future.

“I think one side effect of this pandemic is artists have been forced to really asses what is the value that they’re going to put on what they do, and where are they going to draw the line,” Dempsey explained.

“It’s a balancing act as well because they don’t want to be hard-nosed, but if you’re actually giving people music, then should you just give it away? I don’t think so.”

You can check out Something for Kate’s exclusive content on Patreon here.

Hear the full story on Hit Different, a free weekly podcast that puts music culture in context.