I don't disagree that other options should be tried; I'm saying that they likely won't work en masse. You'll always find artists who will find patronage through a small following, but we're not headed back to the era of large swaths of the music industry making a living off of their music.

Walk into your typical library. Look at all of the books on the shelves. Pick a random book. Pull it out. Imagine that book yells at you "I deserve more money if you want to read me!".

Do you pay for the privilege to read that book? Or do you push it back in and pick from the thousands of other books available? We are awash in cheap/free content, that's the problem.

I like the way that services like Patreon can bring fans closer to the musicians. I'm an indie novelist and while my sales are not nearly high for me to write books as a career I regularly get tweets etc nudging me to get the next book out. If this interaction can be improved for both parties so much the better. Mind you - it may not work with artists/writers with huge amounts of fans!

How does Patreon compare to doing your own Kickstarter or Indiegogo for patronage?