Make Music Pasadena tries crowdfunding for future installments

By August Brown

March 15, 2013 12 AM PT

The popular annual Make Music Pasadena festival has hosted such headliners as Best Coast, Zola Jesus and Grimes. Bands like that don’t come for free, even when the festival does.

So as the festival grows (last year, it drew 25,000 fans), organizers are trying new ways to recoup costs. For the 2013 edition, they’re crowdfunding with a slate of prize packages for fans willing to pony up for a free festival -- scheduled for June 1 this year -- in advance.

The gifts range from a digital shout-out of your generosity on the fest’s website to signed records and shirts up through total VIP access at all stages.

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The festival was founded in 2008 and has quickly become a staple of the free-neighborhood fest gantlet that includes similar ones in Eagle Rock, Venice and Echo Park (but no longer Silver Lake, which has seen Sunset Junction and Jubilee bite the dust or move on in recent years).

Thus, the difficulty of keeping such festivals free -- as more people come for the low cost and the high-quality acts, they get more expensive to produce, and have little recourse to raise additional funds. Here’s hoping this idea can keep Make Music Pasadena in the black.

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