Is pledging the future of releasing music?

I ran into a tweet from Metro Station recently, saying they are releasing new album. This made me happy. Since then, I found out Metro Station contains Mason Musso only from now on. Oookay… Well, almost. Being an unsigned artist, he wants YOU to fund/pledge the process of making and releasing the new material with the goal of $50,000 on Indiegogo.

More and more artists started to do this - irrespectively of how small/big fishes they are in the industry and whether they are working on music related projects or just on a side project - and people or fans are actually willing to support them.

As an outsider of music industry, I find this a little strange since wouldn`t it be the record label`s work to provide money for these sort of things? Let`s just look further a bit; if everyone worked this way, that could easily mean the end of record labels because musicians wouldn`t need them anymore and would put releasing on a whole new level.

Metro Station isn`t the only musician who asked for fans` help:

- Oli Sykes of Bring Me the Horizon will now release the first issue of a comic book series ‘Raised by Raptors’ thanks to the people who helped pledging the project with more than the double of the goal amount.

- The Architects just started their campaign in which they`d like to release a comic book that is based on a concept album.

- Just Left, an upcoming unsigned pop-rock band from Chicago, also needed help to release their ‘What Goes Around Comes Around 2.0’ EP.

These are just a few that caught my attention but not to talk about music only…Remember when the creators behind the hit series Veronica Mars reached the goal of their Kickstarter campaign for $2,000,000 a few hours after they launched it? They can make the highly anticipated movie version of the story now and also proved to the film studio (that didn`t want to fund the making of the movie)that people do want this to happen. The 3D Printing Pen (I`m totally getting it when it comes out) wouldn`t become reality either without people`s help.

Back to music and to the most relevant project to this topic. Ryan Phillips and Adam Russell of the Missouri rock band The Story of the Year can also make their film ‘Who Killed (Or Saved?) The Music Industry?’ thanks to the pledges of many music fans. I`m really excited about this film. Hopefully it will give an insight for everyone on how the music industry works behind the scenes these days and (in my opinion)most importantly how do they use the money that fans give to their favourites in exchange of music, merchandise and gig tickets.Until the film comes out, my question is…Is the situation really so bad that a musician needs to raise money to make new music?

As a fan, have you ever pledged a project like this?