I was just giving a useful use case 
I’m definitely not one who subscribes for “exclusive content”, I have no intentions to sell anything either, I’ve been asked several times to open a patreon by others and sell my rytm patches so I gave them away to these people, but I do see how this model can be useful for others.
and I’m not talking about gear reviews or stuff like that, talking about artists either doing art or selling patches or education.
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It entirely depends on the person.
Some creators take a year to make one video, and I’ll pay. Those creators will also generally feel guilty and stop billing people while they work it out.
Some people make way too many videos and I have to stop paying per.
My sweet spot is small-scale documentarians like https://www.youtube.com/atrocityguide
I still give a few bucks to big ones like RedLetterMedia, but they don’t need my funding as much.
Oh yeah, and it’s great for artists like Rory Blank, I give a few bucks and get a package with stickers and a zine.
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There is a great potential in the format, but since it’s an open invitation to anyone who wants money to try and ask for it, it also has a danger and an unsavory air like a restaurant with really good soup where a bunch of mobsters hang out or something, I can’t really make a good comparison right now but I see more use of the system that I disagree with than which I agree with.
Totally 100% agree on wanting to take the shortcut past reading though, really hate having to take time out of my enthusiasm to browse a 300 page online manual. And your RYTM patches would definitely be valuable to people but I sort of think (and this is super biased) something like gumroad where you put content for sale, not just “content or fund me” is a better platform model.
However, the fund me part is valid for some, and that’s why it get’s muddy (to me) in that there is no screening process other than what you can do with your own discretion.
However, if there were a politician who had a few good ideas, but people took those ideas and made them negative and went around using the politician’s name to support those negative ideas, then eventually the name of the politician becomes associated with those negative ideas regardless of the original intent.
For me, Patreon is that politician. Doesn’t matter what he said in the first place, because now I can only associate him with all the people saying his name (as people do with patreon).
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oh yeah gumroad is great too, I bought bunch of stuff there like Dave Mech courses and bunch of M4L devices and whatnot, but it’s 10% flat, soooooooo… kinda worse for the creator…
but yeah it’s an alternative, and it has subscriptions too iirc…
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I do realize you can’t make blanket statements about stuff like this, and I don’t think people on either side of patreon are villains. Like most stuff, it comes down to how you use the resource. We live in an imperfect system, so something like this will never be perfect and can’t be held to that standard. I just feel crusty when someone I know wants me to go to their patreon, and I would have a very difficult time asking people I know to go to my patreon (if I had one).
Other people, as they demonstrate in life, have absolutely zero problems taking money from others in their circles and that’s one thing I’ve never been very good at. That may be one big difference here so perhaps I’m not a good example for this platform.
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Over the years, I’ve supported a variety of artists, essayists, podcast hosts via Patreon. It’s firstly about supporting art/ a cause/ information I believe in/ like, and secondarily about what I get in return. I currently support 3 creators, one of whom I’ve followed in some form or other for almost two decades. The other two I mostly support because I get a lot more than $5/month in value from the work they do. I think of it as an additional streaming subscription in those cases.
In a couple cases, I discovered I was funding someone else’s lavish lifestyle and the money wasn’t being used for its stated purpose. Those got cancelled immediately - I’m not giving someone money so they can buy a huge house in the second most expensive city in the US while abusing those who work with them/ taking advantage of others’ generosity. There are definite risks and very valid questions about the whole thing, and it’s worth critically examining every few months to see if I still value what I’m funding.
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In most cases, you can do that, but there’s no easy “download the full backlog” option. Either you’ll have to go through each post manually OR hope that the patreon you’ve subscribed to has an RSS feed (and many do.
My favorite Patreon is for an actual-play podcast, and they have a side campaign + run one-shots as their big thing. That is worth it to me. Most of the rest I treat as tipjars for people who don’t run ads with their stuff.
(I have considered Captain Pikant’s for those drum pattern tips and transcriptions)
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I support Dirtywave because I have a ton of respect for what he’s doing, and it’s really interesting to get the inside scoop on a product’s development. Furthermore, for the Model:02 he asked for input from his patrons regarding some small but meaningful elements of the design.
I also support Bad Gear because Florian is a funny mofo and his videos are both informative and entertaining. And I never feel like he’s trying to sell me on anything.
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Can you expand on this?
What are you getting value wise? Knowledge? Samples? Etc…
The thing about this gear community is that people, myself included, seem primarily interested in the gear and not so much the music other people make with it. People are mostly looking at other people’s work either because they want to hear an opinion on gear they’re considering buying or already own, or they are looking for inspiration such as hearing what a piece of gear can do and sound like.
So we started our YouTube channel with that in mind to serve two purposes: selfishly, as a platform where we (my music-making friend and I) get to share our music with the focus on the gear being used for it, and educationally as a source of inspiration that aims to show what’s possible if you push the gear in a certain direction. We started the channel with Syntakt as the focal point. As such, our videos/music are often focused on pushing the gear to certain “extremes”, like using the Syntakt as a 12-voice polyphonic synth in a film score-like theme. (I write “extremes” in quotation marks because it’s obviously not that extreme, but rather just something you don’t normally think of when searching youtube for a Syntakt jam.)
Our music is free on YouTube in its entirety. People can just grab a free youtube-to-mp3 to download it if they want. We have considered something like Bandcamp but we’re dragging our feet there. I don’t know, it feels a bit weird to assume that people would be willing to pay for our music.
The reason why we eventually started a Patreon was because part of that educational/inspirational process, at least for me, involves learning how something was made. And because we’re also on a learning journey ourselves around production techniques, we wanted to give the opportunity to take some shortcuts in case there are people who just bought a piece of gear and are starting the music making journey now.
So we offer our project files (both Ableton Live and the project files for whichever piece of gear we’re using for that production) as downloads on Patreon. The idea is that if you heard something that really inspired you, you can download the full project and tinker with it and grab whichever parts you found valuable from it. We put a price tag of 3 USD for a full project download. I don’t know if that’s “generous” but it’s at least not robbery considering that there are normally 50+ hours of work in total from sketching on the gear, to producing and mixing it in Ableton. If someone can get some value out of experimenting using their own hands with some of the techniques we used, that’s mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned. When I (re-)started music making back in 2017, that’s for sure something I’d gladly pay for to learn faster than we were able to do by ourselves.
Of course, there’s also the option of paying 10 USD for one month to do the full grab of all our content to date. We weren’t expecting much from that because I probably wouldn’t do it myself unless there was a whole well of content I could learn from. Most members stay for a month or two, then cancel their membership. I always reach out to thank them and ask if they found the content valuable. But some people stay for a few more months and I’m obviously honored and grateful for that (while being even more grateful that this isn’t my primary source of income 
).
I personally do all of this (forum, YouTube, Patreon) because I love being part of a community, so I value the comments on YouTube or here on Elektronauts as much as a 1:1 chat on Patreon. I was an open source contributor for almost a decade before I got too busy with a job and family, so that desire to connect is part of my DNA. Otherwise the effort wouldn’t be worth it to me and I’d rather just keep the music to myself.
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i can recommend only 2 accounts:
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look mum no computer if you are into soldering / diy electronics etc. a lot of his stuff on patreon is more like an electronics lesson + you get schematics for all of his stuff and some nice sound samples.
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ned rush if you are into breakbeats / ableton. lots of great and really usable samples and ableton tutorials. he also designs max4live devices that you can download. many of them are very useful.
other then that i still have to find another patreon account that’s worth it…
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I guess I’d pay for patreon for some educational content or someone producing music and putting it out there. And i did it before. But I would never pay someone who is “reviewing” gear or going over presets or something like that. I’d spend 20 more minutes and find someone who is doing it for free or watch someone using it. Internet is huge. Content is endless.
I used to follow
Ned rush
The black dog
Ben Jordan … I think.
Both posted lots of useful stuff … black dog have sample packs , tracks etc… ned rush has been mentioned already.
I stopped following when I was made redundant
The only current thing … I subscribe to Roel funcken on Bandcamp … a new track every month or two.