Administration and liquidation: May to July 2019
Benji Rogers, the company's co-founder, stated in a blog post dated May 8 that efforts to sell the company had failed and that "PledgeMusic will shortly be heading into administration". Rogers said that the crowdfunding platform had used money that was pledged for use by musical artists to pay off the company's debts instead. Many artists who were pledged money through the website will most likely not receive the money that was promised to them.[19] John Zorn is among the artists affected, who is owed $197,559, money which was pledged to help him finish his 25-year-long project, The Book Beriah.[20]
On 9 May, Kevin Brennan, Labour MP, raised the question of musician and consumer protection in light of PledgeMusic's collapse, in Parliament.[21]
By June 5, a number of trade bodies in the United Kingdom, including UK Music, had launched a survey to investigate the impact PledgeMusic's failure would have on the industry.
Sometime between July 13 and July 25, the PledgeMusic.com website became unavailable. The latest archived copy held by web.archive.org was dated July 13.[22]
On July 31, a petition to wind up PledgeMusic.com was heard in the High Court of London.[23][24] The petition was presented by Russell Rieger on behalf of the directors of PledgeMusic.com, who at that time were Russell Rieger, Joshua Sason, Donald Ienner, Daniel Rowe and David Walsh,[25] and was granted on August 19.[26]
