One of the island’s most popular singer-songwriters has embraced a new way of engaging with his fans and promoting his work.

Jeff Jepson has launched himself on the Patreon website, a web space that allows people to sign up and regularly donate money to a particular artist under a form of patronage.

By paying as little as $1 a month to the American website, Jeff will release one brand new song each month.

In addition, the site allows for a higher band of patronage, at $2 each month, for which Jeff will release some more rare material, such as recorded live tracks, demo or remixed versions of his songs, or reproductions of manuscripts, songwriting notes or pages of lyrics.

’Instead of something like gofundme or any other crowd funding source, which are geared towards single projects, this lets people support artists to carry on creating for a very little amount each month,’ said Jeff.

’I only joined it about two weeks ago, and have loaded one song up so far.

It is very early days, but it will be interesting to see how it could grow.

’At the moment I only have four ’patrons’, but it will take a while to build up the idea and to generate a good following on there.

’It will be a gradual process, but a very interesting one too.’

Jeff believes the challenge of writing and recording a unique song each month will also help him develop as a songwriter.

’That itself is a good challenge to have,’ he said.

’It sharpens you up and makes you work that bit harder on what you are doing.

’It is often the case that, when you are writing a song, you have bits of half-finished tracks and lines of music all over the place, and some never really get finished, or even forgotten. This will push you to finish those songs.

’My songs I have uploaded at the moment are a simple acoustic track, called ’Recipe’, which can be listened to by funding 1$ a month.

’For the higher rate, I have uploaded a version of a live version of my song ’More Than a Favour’.

’All these songs will be exclusive to patrons through the site,’ he continued.

’You do have to keep it separate from your other songs, to keep it exclusive and to make sure it works as a proper reward system.

’In theory it is a great reward system, where people can genuinely feel that they are helping out a particular artist directly.

’It cuts out the middle-man, and gives you a direct one-to-one relationship with the artist. And that artist gives you something in return.’

Jeff has recorded three albums with his group, the Jeff Jepson band and, last year, supported the group the Fratellis.

Details can be found at patreon.com/jeffjepson

by Mike Wade

twitter:@iomnewspapers