Business News Digital

PledgeMusic suspends payments to artist campaigns

By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 7 February 2019

PledgeMusic has stopped taking new monies from fans on all of its active crowdfunding and pre-sale campaigns as it continues to try to recover from ongoing financial issues.

In an email to artists, Pledge said that it felt halting sales was an “appropriate” course of action. Anyone attempting to make payments though campaign pages on the site are met with a message stating that “PledgeMusic has suspended pledges on all active campaigns and will look to resume them shortly”.

How long “shortly” might be – or exactly why the company has stopped taking payments entirely at this point – is not clear. In a statement to Billboard, the firm said that “commercial sensitivities” meant it could not comment further.

This all follows an initial statement from the company last month, which was issued as an increasing number of artists went public about Pledge’s late payment issues and the impact those issues were having on their own artist businesses.

The payment problems first came to light last year, but Pledge said in October that an executive rejig and new finance system should address the issues. However, that didn’t happen. The company is now looking for a strategic partner or buyer which could safeguard the future of the Pledge business while also assuring that all artists currently owed money would get paid in full.

In a statement last week, the company confirmed that it was in talks with various parties about “a potential partnership or acquisition” to help overcome the current problems. It also said that in future, campaign pledges would be held by a third party, with Pledge only taking its fees out of that income.

It also confirmed that co-founder Benji Rogers had returned to the company as a “volunteer strategic advisor”.