XOXO, the Kickstarter backed successor the Drip artist and label subscription platform is shutting down before it launches. “Ultimately, we couldn’t find a way to make the business viable,” the XOXO team wrote announcing the closure.
Kickstarter acquired Drip in March of 2016 and experimented with several iterations of the artist subscription and fan funding platform.
“We explored a number of different options – voluntary subscriptions from users, premium features, increased fees -but the resources required to support a high number of lower-volume creators always outpaced our revenue,” the post continued.
While Patreon continues to serve creators with a similar platform, the decision to stop XOXO development may have been influenced by the recent messy demise of music crowdfunder PledgeMusic.
“We were building this for the community we care about, and many of the artists and creators in our community are already financially insecure and vulnerable, write the XoXo team.”The idea of launching something with so much uncertainty and risk felt irresponsible and unfair.”