Here are the facts: Music Fog will be 4 years old at the end of the year. In that time, we have posted nearly 900 videos on YouTube, which have now been viewed 11 million times. We average 500,000 views a month on YouTube, where we have 9700 subscribers. Music Fog has 9400 Facebook fans, and 16,400 followers on Twitter. We post four videos a week of our own creation, and two a week from outside sources. Our videos have been shared globally. Everything has been viral, we have done no advertising. We don’t charge a fee to film the artists, because then the only content we would bring would be from those able to pay for it…THAT would change everything. Ethically, editorial content should never be bought and paid for.
So here we sit, with something like 20,000 impressions a day for our content not counting Twitter. So far, that is not a large enough number for a major sponsor to have come on board. And now there are four days left to our Kickstarter campaign. If we don’t make it, all the pledged money reverts back to the people who pledged it and we collect nothing. It also means we won’t be able travel to Nashville to capture content at Americana Fest.
So the question is, will you help? Do you find the videos we bring you enriching? Is there someone you discovered who you hadn’t heard of before? We provide a service to artists and audience everywhere. So far, it has been a hobby for us, a self-funded labor of love. Of course, that is unsustainable, and this year we have turned to crowd sourcing to raise the money to continue to produce high quality video of Americana artists.
Like this one from Carrie Rodriguez from last year’s Americana Fest in Nashville at Marathon Recorders. Carrie is a one woman tour de force, a delight to watch and listen to. She is touring up north this week, and heading to Belgium in mid-September. This tune is originally from the She Ain’t Me album, a sad tale of long distance love, co-written by Carrie and Gary Louris. “El Salvador,” here are Carrie, Luke Jacobs, Ryan Lovan, Hans Holzen, and Kyle Kegerreis.
- Jessie Scott
