Two days ago, Steve Grand — whose same-sex music video “All-American Boy” went viral last summer — launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $81K in a month to fund his first album. But as of today, fans have already pledged $118K, and that number is rising by the minute. This is truly a story of a grassroots movement in support of an openly gay independent artist making it on his own without a label.
Within 24 hours, Steve’s Kickstarter project had been shared roughly 9,000 times on Facebook, and more than 1,600 private consumers had stepped up to fund his dream. In less than two days, Steve’s Kickstarter has become one of only 32 out of 27,000+ music projects in Kickstarter’s history to successfully realize $100,000 or more in funding.
So why are thousands of private individuals donating their own money to make one young man’s dream come true? Steve’s message that a good love song is a good love song regardless of the sexual orientation of the singer and lyrics is resonating with a growing movement defining “gay” as mainstream. One backer commented on the project, “Love you, and love what you said about believing that expressions of love in art can’t be trumped by a damn pronoun. Amen!”
Early on, backers started commenting that GrandFam — the term Steve uses for his fans — should aim to fund the project in its entirety to show the world that there is, indeed, a market for music telling their truth. Fans started sharing messages with each other such as, “New Goal: Get the project completed (sic) funded by the end of the day. I believe we can do it!”
As the amount funded continues to grow, so does the fan connection and excitement, with quotes ranging from, “Let’s do this!” to “This will fund!!!! Steve, I am here to help make sure it happens.”
Steve himself was astonished by the overwhelming support.
“My fans have done it again,” Steve said. “They’re a game changer. They’ve been the driving force at every step in my career, from making ‘All-American Boy’ go viral to making this record possible. I am amazed and grateful. This is truly a grassroots movement.”
Steve added: “Now that we’ve reached our original goal, we can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that this album is definitely going to be made. But there’s really no limit on how high we can fly, if we have the money to market and promote the album properly.”
