After an absolutely phenomenal opening 24 hours of THE LOUNGE KITTENS‘ latest PledgeMusic campaign last October, it looked as though it would be plain sailing for the ladies that pride themselves on ‘ruining’ your favourite songs. Aiming to bring fans a new 6 song mini-album alongside a whole host of other goodies, they smashed their target in just one day and several months on the campaign now stands at a massive 180%.
Unfortunately, it seems that THE LOUNGE KITTENS are the latest in a long line of artists to suffer severe delays in payouts from Pledge with reports suggesting the backlog is now over a year old. The band released a statement to fans today, attempting to explain the situation.
“Pledge is supposed to pay out 60% of the original target amount once the campaign hits 100% and the fans’ cards have been charged”, Zan “Business Kitten” tells us. “That was in October and to date we’ve only received half of that initial sum. Pledge have promised that the money is coming but they haven’t been able to tell us when. We were hoping a solution would be reached without needing to worry our pledgers but we’ve reached the point where we simply don’t want to risk any more of our fans’ hard earned cash.”
“Although our album campaign in 2016 was a success, we weren’t keen on using PledgeMusic again as their commission is really high and their payment structure still leaves artists having to foot a lot of the production costs themselves initially, as most funds aren’t released until the project is completed and all Pledge items fulfilled. However, we decided that from a fan perspective they were the best option both in terms of functionality and trust from having used them for TLK stuff in the past.”
THE LOUNGE KITTENS are urging fans to avoid using the official PledgeMusic campaign and instead order directly from their website. “This means 100% of the money comes straight to us so there’s no chance of it going awol. We are absolutely gutted. Our team has worked so hard on this EP and everything that goes with it and it’s absolutely devastating not being able to pay their invoices. These aren’t big record companies, they’re freelancers and small businesses, like us, who deserve to be paid on time.”
The band have assured fans the EP is going into production this week and the release schedule will remain the same and that they’ll do their best to fulfil all pledges in the agreed timeframe. You can read the full statement below.
Dear Pledgends, C-Bomb Squad & all TLK fans,
We understand that a number of you have heard the rumblings of issues at PledgeMusic and have some concerns over the status of our new EP project and your orders.
Unfortunately, we have been caught up in PledgeMusic’s inability to maintain its payment schedules and we have been working alongside Pledge for some months now in order to settle the debts owed to us. Currently we have only received a small percentage of the total figure pledged by you guys, our awesome fans.
Obviously this means we are having difficulty funding the manufacture of the EP, alongside all the other wonderful merchandise, events and video shoots we have planned. FEAR NOT… We are still making the CD. We’re very excited that it goes into manufacture this week. We will be fulfilling ALL merchandise orders although there may be some delay on certain items, as we try to negotiate our cashflow (or lack thereof). All TLK events will still be taking place. Sing Like A Kitten & Games Night attendees, the details should be in your inboxes. Be In A Music Video pledgers – we are working on details now. If we need to reschedule the date, we will let you know asap. TLK Play Your Party pledgers – we’ve already been in touch and your events are still in our calendars. Please don’t worry. Tour dates are all still going ahead. We can’t wait to see you on the road and the absolute BEST way you can help us right now is to buy a ticket to a live show. As of today, we have put all Pledge items up onto our website for pre-order. If you haven’t put your order in or if you’ve decided you’d like to join us for Sing Like A Kitten or Game Night or any event, then please head to www.theloungekittens.com and place your order direct through us. We would like to avoid any more of your money being held up in this mess.
VERY obviously, this was not at all the original plan. We decided to work with PledgeMusic again following our successful album campaign in 2016 and although at the time of starting this campaign we looked very seriously at alternatives to Pledge, we decided that they would be the best in terms of consumer loyalty and making you guys, the pledging fans, feel most comfortable and secure in your purchases. It seems we were wrong to place our trust in a company that has grown too fast and is now using our fans’ money to keep itself afloat.
We can only apologise and thank you for your understanding. Please know this has been an extremely stressful situation for us, during what should have been a really fun time for TLK, and it seems the stress is likely to continue long after the EP is released and the campaign completed. We had hoped to be able to resolve this without having to publicly discuss our financial situation but as news breaks across the industry, our most important priority is to assure our amazing Pledgends that we’re doing everything we can do make sure you don’t lose out.
Being in a band is hard work. Some days, it’s really fucking hard work. We treat TLK like a business and have done from day one and like any small business, we work closely with other small businesses and trusted freelancers who are all taking financial hits because of this awful situation, but still placing their trust in us and working their arses off to deliver the best music, videos and products we can to you. We cannot thank them enough.
We promise to keep you updated. We promise we are doing the best we can.
Big Kitten love,
J, T & Z xxx