Licia Chery and MyMajorCompany: Crowd financing to stardom

Geneva, May 2012. Licia still could not believe it. For years she had struggled to launch her singing career. She begged, she lied, she banged on doors from Paris to London, from New York to Montreal. Step by step, bruise by bruise, she learned the ropes. Of Haitian descent, born and raised in Geneva, Licia was a classically trained musician. She wrote her own songs, music and lyrics, and her voice and charisma had already generated a fantastic group of dedicated fans on social networks. But that still did not cut it – traditional music producers were unmoved. In 2010 she tried her luck again with a participative music label in Paris called MyMajorCompany (MMC). MMC provided a platform for emerging artists to promote themselves by posting their music online. Unlike traditional music labels, MMC did not invest its own capital to launch new artists – instead it provided a crowdfunding platform (CFP) through which amateur investors, also called “producers,” were able to fund emerging talents such as Licia with contributions of as little as €10. These micro investors could gain not only financially through a stake in the future album returns, but also emotionally through a direct connection to “their” artist(s). MMC pooled the micro-investments together, and once the preset €100,000 threshold was reached, the fundraising was officially successful and was closed to new investors. MMC then put on its more traditional music producer jacket to produce the artist. In effect, the music community (the “crowd”) decided whom to support through its investments, and MMC acted as the music producing arm of the collective wish. On 4 March 2010, less than 75 days after posting her songs on the MMC platform, Licia had 987 fans willing to collectively invest €100,000 in her and a contract with MyMajorCompany for a first album. The dream could start…