Published on June 15th, 2019 📆 | 3695 Views ⚑
0Kickstarter and XOXO have shut down their subscription platform before it launched
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Last October, Kickstarter announced that it was ending its subscriber-based crowdfunding platform, Drip, but that it was planning a successor project with XOXO festival creators Andy Baio and Andy McMillan. Now, that project has been shut down, according to its creators.
Dripâs unnamed successor project was designed to provide âfinancial stability and transparency to independent artists.â It came out of conversations from Kickstarter founder Perry Chen and Baio, Kickstarterâs former CTO, with the intention of migrating Drip creators over to it before shutting it down later this year. Kickstarter provided seed funding for the new platform and had hired people to run it, but Baio and McMillan explained that while the concept was a good idea, they âcouldnât find a way to make the business viable.â
The issue appears to have come down to how to generate revenue in a stable and reliable way. The pair say that they explored a number of options: âvoluntary subscriptions from users, premium features, increased fees,â but kept finding that âthe resources required to support a high number of lower-volume creators always outpaced our revenue.â
âWe were intent on running a sustainable and independent business. Even if we went the traditional route and raised venture capital, it didnât appear likely to survive once that funding ran out. We were building this for the community we care about, and many of the artists and creators in our community are already financially insecure and vulnerable. The idea of launching something with so much uncertainty and risk felt irresponsible and unfair.â
Baio and McMillan noted that they ended up shutting the project down last month, and will be returning the remaining seed funding to Kickstarter. Dripâs shutdown appears to still be on track to happen: they say that theyâre going to help the creators remaining on the platform migrate to others.
Itâs a bit of a shame, because their description of what they were planning looks to be particularly appealing: a subscription platform with a focus on new and marginalized artists, human-curated discovery and recommendations, and community moderation tools.
Gloss