The digital music magazine 'Stereogum' appealed to its readers for help by launching an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign 'Save Stereogum' with a goal of $250k on Monday, June 29, 2020.
The campaign has been initiated to tackle the revenue downturn caused due to the pandemic and will conclude on August 13, 2020. Announcing ‘Save Stereogum: An ‘00s Covers Comp,’ an album of 44 new, never-before-heard covers from your favorite artists of songs from 2000-2009.
Available exclusively as part of a crowdfunding campaign to keep our independent music journalism alive.
The company has produced an exclusive album, ‘Save Stereogum: An ‘00s Covers Comp’. The nostalgia igniting album comprises brand new covers from more than 44 artists, each recording a song of the first decade of 2000. The playlist is yet to be revealed, but the artists have been listed on the site.
Some of the compilation contributors are Anna Calvi, Clipping, Dirty Projectors, PUP, Pure Bathing Culture, Ratboys, Rostam, and Death Cab for Cutie.
The album will be released in September and exclusive to the campaign donors and will not be released, reissued, or streamed anywhere else.
What led to ‘Save Stereogum.’
Stereogum, one of the world’s first MP3 blogs, was founded by Scott Lapateine in 2002. In late 2006, Stereogum received capital through the Pilot Group and was purchased by Spin Media (formerly known as Buzz Media) in November 2007. In December 2016, Eldridge Industries acquired Spin Media via the Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group.
In January 2020, Scott Lapatatine, founder and chief editor of Stereogum, reached into an agreement with Billboard-The Hollywood Reporter Media group and reacquired the company and became a fully independent publication with no corporate investment.
As outlined in stereogum.com, the Stereogum team set out a plan to diversify its business. Still, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company saw a decline in its advertising revenue by more than 50 percent since March. After its biggest advertisers, it has also been hit financially, i.e., concerts and festivals are no more happening. Thus, Stereogum launched the Indiegogo crowd fundraiser for survival during the tough times.
“We risk shutting down before we even got a chance to get going as an independent entity. We have a plan to modernize and just need to survive this tough time in order to execute it.”
In the past 18 years, Stereogum has published thousands of interviews and reviews, reported the musical world with a critical eye, and hosted concerts world-wide. Over the years, it has grown strong, witnessing record traffic in 2019.
Additional rewards available with a donation
The Save Stereogum donors will be entitled to the digital download of the compilation that includes MP3s, artwork, and liner notes on making the GA tier donation of just 20 dollars. The donation options range from 20-1000 dollars. The campaign is offering Stereogum merchandise obtainable with additional donations. The perks include branded T-shirts, hoodies, sunglasses in five different colors, pins, posters, stickers, matchbooks, chewing-gum, Zoom meeting in September with its team and readers, and more. On chipping 100 dollars, one gets virtual access to the September release celebration at New York’s hottest club, Zoom. The highest pledge amount is 1000 dollars that reward credit in the review article by Tom Breihan for one's choice of song, Zoom Party, T-shirt along with the album.
The fundraiser continues, and Stereogum expansion plans.
Save Stereogum crowd-funding received unexpected and overwhelming support from its supporters. The fundraiser achieved its funding goal of $250k in less than a month since its launch. It has raised nearly $300k through around 8500 donors. Nonetheless, the campaign is continuing with two weeks remaining. New merchandise for the funding was also added on July 13.
On July 1, Founder Scott, in a Twitter thread, expressed his confidence that the collected fund will be enough in sustaining until the next iteration in progress is launched. He also added that if the ongoing campaign raises $1.75b, he will sign up for Stereogum for the digital reader analytics ‘Chartbeat’ again.
He also revealed $250k as funding goal was decided based on what ‘Save Paste,’ a campaign by online magazine Paste raised in 2009.
