This is part of our Crowdfunding in Japan series (RSS. Services like KickStarter have become a global phenomenon with the power to let creative individuals take their ideas to new heights. It’s happening here in Japan too, most notably on Campfire, the country’s answer to Kickstarter.

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The musical act The j-Pad Girls was formed in July of 2012 as part of a media art project. Each artist performs a Japanese classic hit song, and the group’s third release Kimi wo Nosete was ranked number one on the Amazon download chart, and number seventeen on the iTunes music video chart.

While the singers are certainly easy on the eyes, they also have the savvy to promote themselves on the web.

In their Campfire project supporting their second season, participants and winners from various beauty pageants also joined the group. The biggest factor in the popularity of Japanese supergroup AKB48 is that everyone in Japan could get involved in the building the next big idol. In the same way, by supporting j-Pad Girls through Campfire, people would get invites to the group’s private Facebook page where you can participate in polls to decide the next album cover as well as other activities. Since a Facebook account is required to become a supporter, the group can also use platform to get an accurate idea of its fan base.

The project, which set a funding target of JPY 200,000 (nearly $2,200), reached that goal and completed recruiting of the group’s first members on November 28, 2012. It will be fun to see — and listen — to how The j-Pad Girls do in 2013!