NEELY Kickstarter Project - Kickstart our Grits!

Kaci and I are excited! It's time to make new music...to put out a new album! But...we need your help.

Before we tell you "how", we want to tell you "why". Here are a couple points about putting out an album:

  1. It is very expensive to do! By the time we get a Producer\Engineer, Studio Time, Studio Musicians, Mixing, and Mastering the cost per song is around $2,500.00 (again, that's PER song). For a 10 song album: $25,000.00 and that doesn't count album artwork or manufacturing of CDs\Vinyl.
  2. Marketing & Touring is absolutely essential! If you don't have a marketing budget for your album, you just put out an expensive album that the general public will never hear about! If the general public doesn't hear about it, your tour sucks. However, if you don't tour but do great marketing...the project still falls flat. See how it all works together? Recording, Marketing, and Touring is a three legged stool. Take away one leg and the stool isn't balanced and you flop. To give you an idea of marketing costs: Most Publicists start at $1,500.00 per Month and have a minimum retainer of 3 months. This doesn't count radio and video promotion. Nor does it count an online campaign (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc...). All in all to do this decent (not excellent, just decent) we need to budget $15,000.00
  3. Great Music Videos!!! How do most of the younger generations find new music today? YouTube. How do you help capture someone's attention? A good visual story. Unfortunately music videos cost a minimum of $2,000.00 to do and go up from there depending on location, props, and actors\actresses.
To do all of this properly we would need a lot of money. In fact we are trying to raise $100,000.00!!!

Enter Kickstarter. A Crowdfunding platform. Check out our Kickstarter Project at this link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neelymusic/neely-kiss-my-grits-album-marketing-and-tour

In a nutshell Kickstarter is a place where artists and inventors can pitch their music\ideas to you, the public, and you can fund them by "pre-purchasing" the products.

This is amazing because this gives us the opportunity to operate at a highly professional level without enslaving ourselves to a Record Label.

What do you mean "enslaving yourself to a Record Label?". Here's the deal: While yes, Record Labels are the best conduit to take an artist to the top fast, mainly because they tightly control the whole system. The artist they are taking to the top is completely under their control because that big "million dollar record deal" is nothing more than a loan that the artist has to pay back before they ever see a dime from their album. The labels have a formula and if you don't want to play the game and be a "yes man" there's a million other pretty faces out there that will sell themselves out to be a star. See how it has become less about the music?

Back to the main point...this is why Kickstarter is AMAZING!!! You give us the freedom to create excellent music. How do you know we will create excellent music? Look at the last two albums we've put out and judge for yourself. Look I've written junk music before and I will probably write a song next week that will be so horrible I'll never share it with any living being...so I'm not being all puffed up with pride here, I'm just confident in my gift!

Want a quick peek? Check out our two music videos on our YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/neelymusic

The down side. Kickstarter is an "All or Nothing" platform. At the end of the project if we do not have the full $100,000.00 pledged then we get nothing and nothing gets charged to your account. The bad thing is...we are stuck and are unable to create new music & videos.

Yes, we could have asked for a lower amount. What good would that have done? We would have one leg of a three legged stool. That would be a waste of resources.

This is doable. Just this year alone we have been in front of more than 15,000 people easy. Not to mention our fans from around the world on Twitter who have never seen us. Then there's Facebook fans, people on our email newsletter, friends, and family members.

Shoot if everyone we've come in contact with, in concert and online, would pledge at the $10 level we would have several hundred thousand dollars to make more music, more videos, have a more extensive marketing campaign, and expand our touring to outside the United States.

All we ask is that you'd at least listen to our music and consider it. If you've read this far you are at least curious :)

Thanks for all you do to make the dreams of two small town kids come true!

Jeremy NEELY
http://www.neelymusic.com


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