Fund It launched last month with an emphasis on facilitating projects from creators in fields like art, design, events fashion, film, music and performance. The crowdfunding concept allows an ordinary and interested citizen to make a financial contribution towards these projects. In return, the artist get to make their idea a reality. With arts funding suffering in the current economic climate, FundIt, (which ironically itself was part-funded by a technology grant from Department of Arts, Heritage & Gaeltacht) offers a way to bypass traditional financial models.

“We believe that ‘people power’ provides real potential for a new way of funding creative ideas,” says Rowena Neville of Business To Arts, the company behind the Fund It platform. Appealingly, that power comes with very little risk. If a project fails to reach its target within its allotted time, those who pledged are charged nothing. If the project succeeds, then the pledgers receive a reward appropriate to the project and a sense of patronly pride that they’ve helped make a creative idea a reality. What’s more, a project which reaches its goal will likely benefit from the readymade audience it has created through its investors and the accompanying social media buzz.

Since Fund It launched just under a month ago, 11 campaigns have been approved by the team. Where Were You! is a book of photography and a documentary covering Dublin street style over the last 50 years. The ThisIsPopBaby-commissioned play from Neil Watkins, the intriguingly titled The Year Of Magical Wanking, has passed the half-way point of its goal of €6,000.  Open House Dublin is hoping to reach a target of €15,000 to produce a book of architectural photography.

Neville says that Ireland is the perfect place for such cultural philanthropy. “We know already that Ireland is among the best in the world at donating smaller gifts to charity and was recently ranked joint 3rd in the World Giving Index Top 10 in 2010, in terms of the percentage of the population that have given money to causes, with an estimated 64% of the population willing to donate.”

The Irish charitable disposition looks to have translated to online platforms if Fund It’s initial success is any indication. Two projects hit 100% of their target goal within the first month. The Irish Museum Of Modern Art received sufficient funding from 92 people to buy four Bea McMahon drawings and Le Cool Dublin’s walking tours have received the required financial support from 113 people. In just over three weeks, the total amount pledged was €25,000.

See a list of available projects at http://www.fundit.ie

It didn’t take long for regular internet users to point out that the supposed 25,000 downloads figure had come from a fake results page that threw up fictitious download figures for any search term entered (bit.ly/aslantorrent).

Well, it has happened all over again. “Groove-oriented purist rock band” One Soul Thrust from Edmonton in Canada have been making similar noise of late. The band who are not exactly well known, have a Twitter account with under 200 followers, just over 300 friends on Facebook and a debut album of clichéd rock ‘n’ roll with a wailing female singer.

The band have been claiming that 100,000 copies of their album have been downloaded through Bittorrent and that the Canadian Record Industry Association supports their claim. As outlined by Torrentfreak (bit.ly/onesoulthrust) , it seems One Soul Thrust have been duped by their lack of experience, like Aslan, by the same fake download numbers randomly populating search engine results.

One Soul Thrust’s “Pirated Platinum”  campaign was based on the band (and its management) misunderstanding spammy techniques. It’s hard not to empathise with the band now that they finally realise that those 100K fans are non-existent and they really don’t have that much interest in their music. One Band Crushed. As one commenter puts it, “100,000 imaginary downloaders can’t be wrong!”

Josh Freese has no such problems. As a much in demand drummer for the likes of Devo, A Perfect Circle and Weezer, the man has a bit of financial breathing space to take some risks. Back in 2009, the deluxe purchase options of his second solo album gained a lot of attention as they included a $20,000 package which included Freese writing two songs about you and a chance to spend a day with him and his friends.

For his new EP, which is written primarily for people who paid money the last time round, Freese is going one better with a range of packages costing from $5 to $75,000. These invariably include Josh’s 5th grade report card, a thank you phone call, lunch and dinner dates, a day at the races, his old car or the big one: he’ll join your band for a month, give you a drumset, write a five-track EP about you, wear matching outfits and “take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL’s Lamborgini.” See? Crowdfunding is clearly the new rock ‘n’ roll.

Sites like Sellaband, Kickstarter, Slicethepie and Pledgemusic have given people in the arts a new way of appealing to fans directly. Each crowdfunding project has different incentives depending on your level of investment: from receiving a production credit to a pre-release download to private concerts to revenue shares – if you’re a fan and you have spare cash, chances are there is something you can get out of it beyond satisfaction.

Since crowdfunding began, it has seen a fair mix of success and failure. Public Enemy were forced to concede that their original $250,000 asking price was too high. Now, nearly 11 months later, the band have raised 80% of their re-adjusted $75,000 price. Duke Special’s Pledge Music finance-raising efforts for three new albums earlier this year received 129% of its asking more modest total.

At the moment, two Irish artists are hoping to follow in Duke Special’s footsteps. Laura Sheeran, a musician from Dublin who has been working on her debut album for the last four years has also signed up to Pledge Music. Sheeran hopes to release Lust of Pig and the Fresh Blood physically in September and, at time of writing, Sheeran has raised 52% of her goal with 19 days left to pledge. Sheeran’s incentives range from a download of the completed album to a gig in a pledger’s house.

Award winning film director Eoghan Kidney has long been hoping to bring his pet project to the big screen. Rogue Moon is a sci-fi novel which was written by Algis Budrys in 1960. Kidney has already secured the rights to make the film and has invested time and resources into the project. Kidney is hoping to create a “low budget high concept sci-fi film” and turned to Kickstarter as an appropriate way of securing additional funds. Kidney is asking for $15,000 over six weeks to raise necessary funds to hire an expert script writer and produce a trailer.

$15,000 seems a lot of money to raise in six weeks but Kidney says he’s just being realistic. “A lot of projects don’t ask for enough, “says Kidney “I think this betrays inexperience and make me doubt they can pull off what they say they are going to do.”

Kidney’s proposition is unique in that, he already has a backer who says they will match whatever money is raised on Kickstarter, effectively doubling every dollar made. Kidney acknowledges though, that crowdfunding projects are in their infancy and there’s a certain element of experimentation with it. “We really want to make this project and we really believe there are enough people out there to get this funded,” Kidney says. “But as Werner Herzog [notorious German filmmaker] said ‘When you’re project is good, the money follows you like a dog with its tail in between its legs.’”

Using Pledgemusic.com, the eyeliner-wearing dreadlocked one is hoping to release three albums and put on some “unusual and elaborate theatrical experiences” with the money raised. 15% of the total will also go towards the charity DePaul.

The three albums include a studio version of songs written for a recent production of Mother Courage & Her Children, an EP of songs based on Huckleberry Finn and a collection of songs inspired by Paul Auster’s book The Book of Illusions recorded by Steve Albini featuring Neil Hannon, Ed Harcourt and others.

To encourage pledges, Duke offered exclusive items including signed albums, a private concert, a sightseeing tour, dinner, a write a song session and a phone call all with Duke himself. It appears to have worked as those items are gone and in total he has received 573 pledges or 118% of the funds he originally asked for.

Last week, I featured (with a question mark) what was claimed to be a new Daft Punk song from the movie soundtrack to Tron Legacy. As reported by Pitchfork, it turns out the track is a fake but it’s not the only French dance music-related skullduggery happening on the net.

A new track from Justice was sent out to music bloggers last week by the Ed Banger record label. Called Beginning Is the End, a number of the big US music sites like Pitchfork, Gorilla vs Bear, Stereogum and hundreds of music blogs posted the song with a fairly lukewarm reaction. As it turned out, the Gallic dance number was a trite predictable and it was revealed as a fake by the band on Facebook. The culprit had managed to fool hundreds of people by faking an edbangerrecords.com email address.

Which begs the question – what were these fake artists hoping to do by cheaply mimicking two of the biggest names in dance music? It’s safe to assume it wasn’t for their own notoriety as they haven’t revealed themselves so perhaps it’s simply a game of chaos and manipulation?

Perhaps being mistaken for a fake is the new badge of honour? I received an email shortly afterwards from a band boasting that Kanye posted their song thinking it was Daft Punk and to check it out. Let’s nip this one in the bud before Wolfmother, who sound nothing like Led Zeppelin are number one every week ad infinitum.