Does crowdfunding in culture work in Spain?
Three out of four cultural sponsorship campaigns have been successful.
Low budget projects have a higher failure rate. Brigade is the proposal that has raised most money: 50.000€ 
Call it what you want: crowdfunding, mass funding, micro sponsorship, direct funding ... Any of these terms used describe the same goal: give support for a cultural project to be successful through a tiny investment in a greater process.
Due to the difficult economic state that the Spanish culture sector finds itself in – two severe budget cuts in the last year-the last, up to 19% in 2013 - and who does not know which door to knock on for financing, more and more projects use the crowd to become reality.
What began as a minority system that initially appealed to artists and designers accustomed to self-financing, has converted into a possibility for major consumer products, in which the public becomes the sponsor and receives exclusive rewards in return for their contributions.

73% of the projects submitted through Verkami, one of the major crowdfunding platforms in Spain, were successful in their campaigns for funding.  The success rate is even higher, 75.3%, if we include the projects based in Europe and America presented through the Spanish platform.

We checked the Verkami data up to 2 October to see what kind of cultural product has possibilities through crowdfunding, and what is the average amount received by successful projects and what are the regions that have been most represented in this new funding model.
What disciplines work best?
According to the data, editorial projects are the projects with the highest success rate, 81.1%, followed by music, 79.1%, and social initiatives, 75%.

By the number of proposals, the music is, by far, the discipline that most uses crowdfunding through Verkami. 239 of the 727 submitted crowdfunding proposals. Overall 32.8% of the proposals had musical goals.

Music was followed by film projects, with up to 167 different proposals, of which 113 projects, (67.6%) obtained the funding they needed.

Projects with worse reception by the public are the festivals. Of 19 projects submitted from 5 different regions, only 3 received the necessary funds. That means that in 84.2% projects were not successful.
These data show a changing trend, says one of the founders of Verkami, Jonas Salas, RTVE.es. "Initially, we received mostly audiovisual projects, such as documentaries. But gradually the trend has reversed and now there are many musical projects and increasingly comics," says the physicist, who shares with his father and brother's passion for creativity, art and research.
Where do the crowdfunded projects come from?
Catalonia is, overwhelmingly, the origin of the vast majority of cultural projects that have sought funding through Verkami, as the platform is located in this community. Specifically, 382 of the 727 cultural projects were placed in Catalonia. Of these, 82.19% were successful and obtained the necessary funding. Catalonia if followed by Madrid, with 115 projects submitted, 73.91% of them successfully, and Valencia, with 79 and a success rate of nearly 75%. Much further behind are two autonomous cities, Ceuta and Melilla, without any registered projects, and Extremadura, with only 1, Cantabria (2) and Navarre (4).

As for the success rate, Catalonia is the most successful, with a 82.19%, followed closely by Aragon and Castilla y Leon, two communities in which three of the four projects were successful.
Are the 'cheap' projects most successful?
You would think that the lower the amount of money required, the greater the chance of achieving project funding. However, the data show that those with a lower budget have a higher failure rate. Of the 417 projects with a value of less than 2500€, 220 were successful -52.7%. 197 of the projects, 47.2%, did not get the necessary funding.

As the amount of money required increases, so does the success rate. For example, in projects between 2500 and 5000€, 96.3% of the submitted -220 - obtained funding. A success rate similar to that obtained in projects located in the strip between 5000 and 10000€, 96,8%.

Staring from 10000€, the data suggest that the greater the amount of the project, the more chances of success. The success rate of the 29 projects above 10000€ is 100%.

The record high marked so far as is of the comic Brigade, which this summer has raised 50063€,   well above the initially requested 39000€.

These data support the conclusion that the amount of money required is not always decisive, but what makes a crowdfunding campaign works or not is the quality of the idea. However, the data show that the vast majority of projects submitted, up 96.3%, range between 2500 and 10000€.

According to the data managed by Verkami, the average amount of funding per project has increased over the past two years. Of the nearly 3000€/ project they had registered at the beginning, this now stands at around 3700€.
A partir de los 10.000 euros, los datos apuntan a que cuanto mayor es la cuantía del proyecto, más posibilidades de éxito tiene. En concreto, la tasa de éxito en los 29 proyectos superiores a 10.000 euros es del 100%.

From alternative artist to mass artist
There is a clear evolution, according to Verkami owners, that shows the change of both the type of project that seek crowdfunding as the type of patron/sponsor. If at first artists were accustomed to self-financing, now those that seek crowdfunding are increasingly well established artists.

Recognizable names in the Spanish cultural scene are slowly adding up. Jero Romero, former leader of Sunday Drivers, began his solo career last October thanks to the contributions of 700 sponsors that in just over 13 hours obtained the minimum amount needed to record and post produce his new album.
Actor Ruben Ochandiano has been one of the last to join this format, in order to finance his directorial debut 'Cuento de Verano', codirecter by Carlos Dorrego.

Private individual sponsorship is becoming more faithful to this type of cultural 'access' and 40% of donors repeat n other projects, says Jonàs Salas.

This is only a first attempt of data analysis of the crowdfunding business model in cultural industry. It remains to be seen how it will develop and evolve, but these figures are an interesting indicator of this new strategy.

http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20121009/funciona-crowdfunding-cultural-espana/568606.shtml