This ain't nuthin' special, is it ...?

Hasn't this been suggested already?

The Street Performer Protocol (SPP) was published as long ago as 1999. It clearly forsaw today's problems and proposed a very similar solution to that presented here. We fully acknowledge that we are contributing a relatively small increment to what has already been suggested.

However, ten years on we still don't see SPP being actually applied to fund the production of artistic content. We hope that the Takoha manifesto adds something significant to the SPP as originally published, viz:

• The crisis in copyright-driven funding is now more clearly pronounced. The arguments need to be refreshed to reflect that. It's now possible to imagine the wholesale replacement of the current copyright funding system with fund-and-release systems, rather than supplementing them as the SPP apparently envisages.
• Since 1999, we have experience of new social phenomena developing around the world wide web. 'The Long Tail' and 'Here Comes Everybody' indicate that web-based fund-and-release can transform the relationship between producer and consumer.
• We introduce the role of a project adjudicator which we think will make adoption of fund-and-release more likely, and will provide a useful new role for some of the people currently involved in legacy systems.
• Finally, we offer an alternative name which -while having no immediate connotation for most of us - is perhaps less confusing than the Street Performer Protocol.

Hasn't this been implemented already?

There are initiatives which are in some ways similar, but so far we have not discovered any complete and wide-ranging proposal such as this. Here is a selection of (some very) "near-misses":

http://www.sellaband.com/

http://www.fundable.com/

http://www.pledgebank.com/

http://micropledge.com/help/hiw

http://www.theoretic.com/projects/ransom

http://contingencymarket.com/index.php?title=Introduction

The band Marillion has collected money in advance direct from fans before recording albums. This remains the most convincing example (a level-one system).

Other musicians have already started giving recordings of their work away for free in the expectation of earning income in some other way.

For their last album, the band Radiohead boldly and brilliantly invited contributions from people after release. This is really different, and is almost perfect. It's fine if you're already famous and you can invest in the recording and production costs up-front.

Version 1.03/2009-02-21/DNH

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