Increasingly influential crowd funding platform Kickstarter is heading to our sceptr’d isle.

Kickstarter is the most prominent of a number of sites (cf Indiegogo, Gofundme) which allow artists to canvass their fans for funds directly in return for sweeteners, special privileges or bespoke gifts. Cody ChestnuTT, Black Moth Super Rainbow and, posthumously, Arthur Russell are among the acts to make use of the new model. It’s also bred a fair few controversies: Animal Collective’s Deakin recently issued an apology after confusion about how his funds were being used, and Amanda Palmer’s enormous Kickstarter booty has landed her in a whole world of trouble.

As Music Week report, Kickstarter will launch in the UK on October 31. In a statement on their website, company bosses Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler outlined details of the new venture. Rather than being hosted different site, UK projects will appear on the main Kickstarter site alongside projects from other countries (although bids will be listed in pounds sterling). The business plans for the US and UK models are just about identical, with Kickstarter taking a 5% cut from successfully funded projects and no fee from aborted projects. There is, however, one minor tweak: UK users will enter payment details directly onto the site, rather than going through Amazon Payments as US users currently do.

Although the service doesn’t launch for a few weeks, UK users can already start building their projects on the site. While you wait, Angus Finlayson’s analysis of the pitfalls of crowd funding might be a sobering way of passing the time.