Thursday 18 February 2010

Crowdfunding Examples

Crowdfunding of Music Groups:

Fan financing, or crowdfunding, is already being used by a wide variety of online companies worldwide. For example,www.Sellaband.com and www.SliceThePie.com offer music fansthe opportunity to invest in up-and-coming BANDS seeking funding for their next album. On these Web sites, a band posts a demo of their music that they would like to record professionally. If a fan thinks the band’s demo has promise, he or she can pay as little as $10 and buy a participation unit in the band and later receive a free download of the band’s album when it is released. The fans thereby fund the albums they want to hear, by buying them before they are made.

Crowdfunding of Major Movies

Fan financing, or crowdfunding, can also be applied to MAJOR MOVIES. There are a number of companies worldwide who have already started fan-financing movies besides www.CinemaShares.com. Takewww.IndieGoGo.com for example. This is a site for fan financing movies on a smaller scale. There is also a French Web site offering Crowdfunding of movies: http://www.touscoprod.com/index.php

We must also mention one of the most successful online game sites for fan financing movies - www.HollywoodStockExchange.com orwww.HSX.com. However, this Web site does not really finance movies, as it is just a game for people who want to pick which movies and which stars will succeed at the box office. The site is so successful that over 700,000 users spend an average of 30 minutes per day on the site,pretending to invest in movies. Word has it that they are developing a system to compete with CinemaShares.com for fan financing movies in the not-too-distant future.

In the U.S., no one (that we know of) other than CinemaShares.com has perfected the mechanism of selling single shares of fully registered NASDAQ-listed stock in a movie to online fans through an IPO. We have developed our method of selling stock online using Direct Registration/DRS. Our online affinity groups replace the typical network of brokers working for investment-banking firms that underwrite the offerings. CinemaShares holds a U.S. Patent (# 6792411) for our new method of selling stock online and giving a free DVD as a stock dividend for each share purchased.

Like the other fan financing examples above, our business method also builds and fully monetizes massive online communities around each entertainment company by offering each fan tremendous value for their single share purchase. In addition to their stock, participants in one of our offerings also receive such benefits as:

  • Daily Video clips and pictures from the movie set
  • Contests to be in the movie or have dinner with the stars
  • Voting on certain non-essential but fun items
  • Participation in online chat groups and forums
  • E-mails from the stars and producers
  • Special merchandise offers of discounted hats and T-shirts
  • Discounts to affiliated retail merchants
  • E-mailed autographed pictures of the stars

These benefits are in addition to the free DVD dividend and the cash earnings that each fan receives. We also provide a similar package of benefits to fans purchasing stock in our other entertainment projects such as NASCAR Teams.

The management of CinemaShares.com believes that we offer tremendous value for the purchase of a single share of our preferred stock and we feel that anyone would agree that this is a truly remarkable value for a mere $22 investment.