Artist Brent Bourgeois uses Kickfinisher to distribute new Don't Look Back album

Sites like Kickstarter help businesses get their start. People who want to start businesses share their ideas with would-be investors who make donations to see the ideas come to fruition. The first time I ever used it was to contribute to the completion of a documentary about the band DEVO. DEVO was popular when I was in college. I became aware of this when human incarnation of Grumpy Cat, Martyn Day, had a Facebook post about it.

As with many things in life, they work best when there is symmetry. In computer programming we learn that every begin must have a corresponding end. All memory allocated must eventually be freed. So I guess it should be no surprise that there is a process that a musician has coined as Kickfinishers. As the name suggests, Kickfinishers is the opposite end of Kickstarters. In the case of Kickfinishers, people have finished products instead of ideas and need help bringing the products to market. I first became aware of this when Brent Bourgeois had a Facebook post about it. Brent had just finished creating his new solo album, Don't Look Back, and was looking for his fans to help him sell the album.

"Once you've finished making a record, this is where you used to hand the finished master over to the record company; the promotions and marketing departments decided where they were going to spend their advertising dollars, how much they were going to pay for radio, and how much they would pay for a tour. Then they turned it over to the distribution arm for delivery into the thousands of record stores. Now there is none of that. How do I make people aware that I even have a record out? At least I used to have a fan base. Bourgeois-Tagg sold a lot of records. And I sold a fair amount as a solo artist. But that was over twenty years ago. The deal with kick-finisher is, instead of me asking you to pay for me to make my record, I'm going to pay you to sell my record. I need a sales force, and who better than the people most interested in me making a record?"
— Brent Bourgeois, source: spintthat45.com

As part of Kickfinisher, Brent teamed up with Julian Lennon's (John Lennon's son) White Feather Foundation. Kickfinishers have a choice: They can make $1 for every download they sell, or they can donate the money to the White Feather Foundation to bring 13 liters of clean, safe drinking water to those in need in Africa. Fans get the music and participants get the satisfaction of helping to make a better world. Almost all kickfinishers selected the donation option.

Here are two examples that show Facebook can be both a place for friendship and commerce. Can something like this occur in the design world? Would Autodesk 360 need to be both?

Visit Autodesk 360.

Finishing is alive in the lab.