Several folks have said that they used crowdfunding for their past CDs and will do so for their future ones.

That raises the question, what happened to the money from the past CDs?

Two possibilities I see:

1. The past CDs did not make money, but the artist still wants to keep making more, or

2. The artist used the money from past CDs for something else, and now wants others to donate to the future CD.

(Of course there are other imaginable possibilities, like the CD made a million but the artist got kidnapped and had to spend the million to be released. But in the real world I only see those two.)

Personally, I would not be comfy with either of those. If my first CD did not make enough money to fund the next one, I would not feel entitled to ask others to fund the next one. If my first CD did generate enough money, I would feel ethically obligated to put that money toward future CDs. (There is also the option of using money from a decent day job to fund CDs, as I did with my first one. But not everyone has that luxury.)

I guess the question emerging from all this is: what limits might there be on artists asking for money for their projects? Are there any? Or is it that as long as we don't deceive people with our fundraising we are ethically free to do it as early and often as we want?

Thanks for an interesting discussion. I may have softened my crowdfunding crankiness a bit, but not much.

Still trying. Keep 'em coming.