On Patreon, you can pay Bob Dylan $5 a month to read his lectures, short stories and imagined “letters never sent” between historical figures, such as Fred Astaire and HG Wells. So far, so Dylan. You might wonder why on earth a world-famous musician who sold his publishing catalogue to Universal for a reported $300m in 2020 is charging fans for his ramblings? Have the writing, narration or promotional material been created with the help of AI, as many have speculated? Perhaps the most pertinent question, however, is for the crowdfunding platform itself: do you need to be a superstar like Dylan—or...