By Zach Collier
In a recent visual essay by Polygraph, authors James Wenzel and Matt Daniels used data provided by Kickstarter to examine the cultural climates of cities across the United States. They were given access to data from over 100,000 projects. We found it interesting that Provo, of all places, received a considerable amount of attention. The authors wrote:
“Other interesting observations:
Provo, UT reps its Creators: Provo, Utah has only 100,000 people. But in terms of number of projects with over 1,000 backers, it looks like it should be the population of Indianapolis or Miami. The city’s community is engaged with every sort of project that its creators launch. It’s also home to Brigham Young University, which leads to our last point…
College Towns: cities with large student populations over-index in Kickstarter projects. This may explain why Pittsburgh is a top 20 city for Kickstarter projects, but ranks 85th in population (it’s home to Carnegie Mellon and Pitt). Similarly, cities such as Ann Arbor (Michigan), Savannah (SCAD), and Providence (Brown, RISD) are notable hotbeds for Kickstarter projects.”
Out of the 240 Provo-based projects examined in the article, 17% of them were music projects. The most backed Creator was Jenn Blosil, followed closely by Parlor Hawk’s 2013 Album. John Allred’s Forest Eyes is the third most backed music project in the City. Blosil was backed by 367 people and raised $15,335. Parlor Hawk was supported by 337 backers who donated $15,265. Allred raised $3,308 and was backed by 135 people.
Salt Lake was credited in the article for being the 2nd most popular city for games projects, after adjusting for population. Orem also had a strong showing. While the number of created projects overall was fewer in number, Orem appears to go for quality over quantity. As a whole, each attempted project had thousands more backers than ones in Provo, with the most backed project (the SnapPower Charger) receiving support from 18,604 different backers. Out of the three Utah cities analyzed in the article, Provo supported the highest percentage of music projects. This strong showing on Kickstarter shows that Provo truly is the #CityOfStarts.
You can read the entire study here. Jenn Blosil’s “Enemy” is featured on our October ’16 Provo Music Playlist. Give it a listen below.
Provo Music Magazine 