New York Times best-selling author Seth Godin is a fan. So is novelist Bret Easton Ellis. Ben Folds embraced it to bankroll his new album. Amanda Palmer has used it to raise over a million dollars and game studio Ouya just cashed in to the tune of $5.4M and counting. No longer the domain of the struggling indie artist relying on populist largesse, crowdfunding has gone high-profile. In the last year alone, Kickstarter has had seven projects that topped $1M (Palmer’s was the first). But when celebrity or corporate content creators move in, do they squeeze the little guy out? Are we seeing the gentrification of grassroots creative funding?
