Sleepify

Overview

In March 2014 the American Band Vulfpeck released the Album Sleepify onto the online streaming platform Spotify. The album consists of ten silent songs, each with a length between 31 and 32 seconds.

Sleepify was a project of informal crowdfunding.

What happened?

Upon release the band urged fans online to play these silent tracks on replay when they're not using the streaming service otherwise (for example overnight, while they are sleeping) in order to earn the band revenue from the streaming platform. The band intended to use the money this would earn them to organize a free concert tour across the USA.

In late April 2014 the Album was deleted from Spotify. By this time each track had accumulated about 500.000 plays, which totaled up to about 5,5 Million total plays from the Album. On Spotify each streamed track earns an artist between 0,0056 and 0,008$. According to reports Sleepify earned Vulfpeck roughly 20.000 $. The band subsequently used this money to organize the promised tour, free of admission. The Sleepify tour included six concerts in cities across the USA (in San Francisco, San Louis Obispo, Los Angeles, Chicago, Ann Arbor and New York).

Comparison to formal crowdfunding

The major differences to regular crowdfunding processes here are that: I) the platform through which the money was transformed (Spotify) is not intended for crowdfunding nor did the platform (initially) know that a crowdfunding process was happening on their platform and II) the people who supported the instigating party (Vulfpeck) did not actually spend any money in the process instead money was generated through them spending their time listening to songs and the intermittent advertising.

Other factors do however revoke the standard crowdfunding formula. The instigators stated their goals publicly (via social media) to their supporters, they explained how one could support them and they (in broad terms) stated what they would use the money on in case of success.