DIY a DIWO in participatory culture: tools, practices and experiences in crowdfunding music projects

Thanks to the disintermediating and participatory architecture of the web, many DIY music practices tend to manifest themselves as DIWO (do-it-with-others), where “others” are not only music professionals but fans and web users. New tools enable practices where new relationships between musicians and fans are experienced, in a context characterized by the crisis of the main traditional players of the music industry. On the one hand a lot of discourses tend to emphasize the chances of empowerment for the self-managing “artist 2.0”, able to draw on the “wealth of networks”, to build communities and to outsource to the crowd; on the other, new imbalances and hierarchies seem to appear, insofar such practices require resources and skills for the accrual and mobilization of social capital, while different web-platforms afford specific patterns of action and interaction. One of such practices is crowd- or fan- funding, which in many ways exemplifies the view of social networks as social capital and the monetization of fan engagement. Drawing on analysis of 18 websites hosting music crowdfunding campaigns (13 of which specialized only in music projects) and on several in-depth interviews to either musicians/bands and backers, the paper aims to provide some insights about both the way fan funding is experienced and practiced and some of the factors relevant in fostering some musicians or bands instead of others