Wintersun’s first of three crowdfunding campaigns officially ended over the weekend. Despite it taking less than 24 hours to reach their goal of 150€, the campaign continued and ended making €428,310 raised by 8596 backers, which translates to 456,749.78. Their final goal is 750.000€ with an intention to make roughly 150€ per campaign. The first one included a hefty package of content at the price of 50€ that you can’t find anywhere else for their upcoming third studio album The Forest Seasons – but all digital. The band announced the package is expected to arrive sometime in July since, the release date hasn’t been revealed. The money goes to the band’s creative process by having their own building and we thought this idea was a bit extreme. However, their fans are obviously fully supporting their dream. While Amanda Palmer has raised over $1 million in crowdfunding, Wintersun appear to have broken a record for metal, far surpassing Protest the Hero’s $340,000/
Finland’s soundi.fi spoke with the band about their successful campaign. Wintersun managed to translate the conversation to English on their Facebook, stating the following:
“Running out of superlatives – Wintersun crowdfunding achieved huge sum
Metal band Wintersun, planning the construction of their own studio, has concluded their crowdfunding campaign – or at least in the first part of it.
The campaign could be described for example with the word “success”, but it seems like quite an understatement. Wintersun offered in the campaign their new album The Forest Seasons, as well as a wide range of bonus stuff, and they were first reaching for 150 000 EUR, but after one month of “campaigning”, they have gathered more than 428 000 EUR.
The singer-guitarist Jari Mäenpää is feeling great – and why wouldn’t he.
– This campaign ended up going just great … In fact, I’m kind of running out of words here as well! We have worked really hard for the last couple of years, but especially this March was full sprinting and chaos behind the scenes, but fortunately mostly in a good way. Fortunately, dreams, in this case our own good quality studio, motivates one to work hard.
– Now we need to give special thanks to our domestic fans, because according to the Indiegogo statistics Finns have – relative to the population – supported us the most by far. See you at Nummirock and Tuska Open Air… And hopefully we can arrange some club shows after a while as well.”
Earlier, when the campaign concluded the band shared their gratitude:
“Wintersun Message – THANK YOU
The last month was truly epic, crazy and amazing! The best month ever in Wintersun’s existence! All this is because of you, our dear fans. We did it together! Thank you for the great crowdfunding campaign guys! The FOREST PACKAGE will arrive in July to all the crowdfunders! Stay tuned for the exact release date!”
