On the 30th April 2012, musician Amanda Palmer announced a new album on her blog. She also launched a funding initiative on a website called Kickstarter. Less than a month later she had raised over half a million dollars towards the costs of recording, mixing, distributing and promoting the album. This is crowdfunding, and this is why it is so important. Of course it helps that Ms Palmer was already an established artist, first with The Dresdon Dolls and then as a solo artist, before she decided to ditch her record label in 2010 and take control of her music. [...]