$1.2m pledged per day on Kickstarter

Kickstarter has released its financials for the first quarter of 2014, which show that an average of US$1.24m was pledged each day from January to the end of March.

Just over US$112m has been pledged to projects this year, with 4,497 projects being successfully funded. Two Kickstarter-funded projects won Grammy awards in February this year: San Francisco-based Latin band, Pacific Mambo Orchestra, who took out the Best Tropical Latin Album, and Roomful Of Teeth, who took out Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.

In regards to film funding, seven Kickstarter-funded films have been nominated for Oscars, with the Veronica Mars film receiving backing to the tune of $5.7m, from 91,585 pledgers.

All this indicates that the fan-funding model has been wildly successful. Kickstarter launched in April of 2009, with the idea of emulating arts patronage which stems back to the 18th Century, when artists such as Mozart and Alexander Pope relied on micro-funding in order to present their works to the public (the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty was funded much in this way).

As of March 2014, over US$1b has been pledged to Kickstarter projects.