TL;DR Artists can use the Kickstarter model to collect from their most ardent fans instead of trying to sell units to everyone.
I think this makes a lot of sense and can work in some cases, but it remains to be seen what happens when the market is saturated with artists looking to collect voluntarily from their fan base. I suspect people will fatigue from the euphoria of being generous and the model will fade, but I hope I'm wrong.
Each artist only needs a few patrons, so as long as the tail of patronage is as long as the tail of consumption each consumer only needs to patronize (is that the right word?) a few artists. I've seen this work for small indie bands with small but loyal followings (ex: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/745015920/the-new-giraff...). Basically, it assumes that each band has a few people that like them a lot as opposed to a lot of people that like them a little.
I think this makes a lot of sense and can work in some cases, but it remains to be seen what happens when the market is saturated with artists looking to collect voluntarily from their fan base. I suspect people will fatigue from the euphoria of being generous and the model will fade, but I hope I'm wrong.