Growth of niche entertainment markets in crowdfunding platforms

Abstract

The crowdfunding landscape has seen a huge growth within the 20th century. With the increase of availability of digital crowdfunding platforms and different digital tools, the entertainment industry has opened for smaller niche creators as the funding and advertisement can be both done through crowdfunding platforms. Due to the democratization of content, the industry has also become highly competitive with both existing companies using crowdfunding for their smaller projects and new creators having easy access to the market.

This master’s thesis aims to study the development of niche entertainment within various crowdfunding platforms and find ways how these platforms can be effectively leveraged in niche content creation. Quantitative analysis is used to develop better understanding of the development of crowdfunding and the findings of the research are compared to the existing scientific literature to form a comprehensive picture of the issue.

The main findings of this thesis indicate that the niche entertainment has seen a huge growth in crowdfunding platforms within the last decade while at the same time the nature of content thriving within different platforms has changed. The development of content has been two-sided with simultaneous high increase in niche content and concentration of funding towards specific niches. Different monetization models, motivation for creation and funding and project schedules push toward different platforms that are most optimal for the specific creator.

The thesis concludes that while niche entertainment continues to thrive in crowdfunding, the rise of competition, democratization of content and algorithmic powers sets difficulties for new niche ventures to enter the market. For a new venture it is crucial to choose an optimal platform and create networks and community prior entering the crowdfunding platform as existing communities highly increase the likelihood of success in niche entertainment.