Crowdfunding in the Cultural Industries

Abstract

Cultural production has stood at the forefront of crowdfunding adoption representing some of the first crowdfunding campaigns on record. This development emerged as part of comprehensive value chain reconfigurations in the cultural sector, which were triggered by the advent of digitalization on the one hand and the downsizing in public funds on the other. As a result, the emerging phenomenon here labelled as ‘cultural crowdfunding’ (CCF) has captured the imagination of researchers and practitioners. The study of CCF is of high relevance, as it presses creators to strike a balance between the commercial and the non-commercial, the economic and the cultural outcomes, as well as the authentic and independent versus the mass dictated and dependent. In this chapter we review earlier research on CCF and identify core themes and key studies representing such themes. Later, we outline an agenda for future research, while also suggesting some implications for practice.