Patreon acquires artist subscription competitor Subbable

Crowdfunding subscription platform Patreon, which is used by Amanda Palmer, has acquired its competitor, Subbable.

Patreon was founded in 2013 by Jack Conte, one half of the band Pomplamoose, to allow creators to accept patronage from fans. Subbable, also founded in 2013, by YouTube content creators Hank and John Green (the Vlogbrothers), enters the Patreon family with its 24 content creators.

While not all financial terms of the acquisition have been disclosed, Patreon has said it will spend much of the money on Subbable’s creators, matching contributions from those who pledged money to the Subbable creators up to $100,000.

Conte said: “Patreon IS acquiring Subbable and money IS changing hands, but MOST of the money that Patreon is spending on this acquisition is going to the matching program.”

According to a blog post by Conte, the acquisition was sparked when Amazon Payments (Subbable’s payments processor) announced it will shutter to make room for Amazon’s Flexible Payments Service, which meant from June Subbable would see a 30 to 40% decrease in their monthly income.

“Patreon proposed a solution, dreamed up by my cofounder extraordinaire, Sam Yam: If Subbable creators launched on Patreon, we would reduce the effect of "drop off" by matching the first 45 days of pledges, up to $100,000,” said Conte.

Subbable co-founder Hank is already on the Patreon advisory board and will be joined by John. Meanwhile, Patreon will bring the brothers’ two most popular YouTube shows, SciShow and CrashCourse onto the Patreon platform.

Patreon has seen a spike in users over the last year. According to Google Trends, in the last 12 months, Patreon's Google search traffic has roughly doubled. It’s no Kickstarter though, the widely-known crowdfuding service received $529 million from 3.3 million pledgers in 2014 alone. Patreon’s traffic pales in comparison, with Billboard reporting it has only 7% of Kickstarter’s global traffic.