PLEDGEMUSIC HELPS STIRLING EARN SOME SILVER

Lindsey Stirling’s career has been built on direct fan access. For her new album Brave Enough, which debuted at #5 last week on the HITS SPS chart, close to 15% of her 45k sales came from her PledgeMusic campaign.

It’s Stirling’s second artist-to-fan PledgeMusic campaign to result in a significant chart debut. Her 2013 album Shatter Me had a Top 5 debut as well and has sold 320k copies to date in the U.S. making it the biggest seller among albums with a PledgeMusic campaign.

"It's a privilege to work with an artist like Lindsey Stirling who not only has an incredible creative vision for her music, but who shares that same creativity in how she can grow and deepen her connection with fans in partnership with PledgeMusic,” said Dominic Pandiscia, CEO PledgeMusic. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with her through two album-cycles and equally thrilled to see our share of her sales grow to the level it has with Brave Enough."

The violinist, who releases her music through her own Lindseystomp Records, was initially a YouTube sensation; her channel on the website has amassed more than 1b views and 7.8m subscribers. Brave Enough, which was exec-produced by Pulse's Josh Abraham, features the song “Something Wild” (featuring Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness) which appears in Disney’s remake of Pete’s Dragon.

In a related story, Pandiscia has almost mastered "Turkey in the Straw" on the fiddle.