Somebody told me today that the SEC is now permitting crowd-fund contributors to receive stock ownership in return for their investments. This is a very different model from the traditional kickstarter campaign.
This sort of highly granular ownership participation opens the door to completely different ways of thinking about the money flow around things like novels, plays, independent films and other art projects. The person who puts down $20 now so that you can write your next book will own a small piece of the profits if your project is a success.
Those microinvestors will be motivated to start talking up the work to their friends, family and colleagues. Creating a buzz to build a successful market will turn into a highly distributed enterprise, greatly aided by modern forms of social media.
If this model of small scale enterprise works out, the long tail may be poised to become a lot more interesting.