Since its founding in 2009, Kickstarter — where artists, inventors and other creative types solicit early payments from supporters — has raised $1.9 billion for nearly 100,000 projects of various kinds. Music has been the most popular category, with 22,000 successful campaigns that have raised $149 million, although creators in areas like technology and film have raised larger sums for fewer projects. (Kickstarter campaigns are completed, and supporters charged, only if pledges reach a minimum level set by the artist.) Amanda Palmer holds the record for the most money raised for a music project, $1.2 million for her 2012 album, “Theatre Is Evil.”

At any given time, around 500 music-related campaigns are underway on Kickstarter, and a scan shows plenty that fit the site’s stereotype of indie strivers in boho capitals: a solo ukulele album from a performer in Seattle, a Brooklyn band working on its first live release.

But the Grammy nominations this year also show the site’s breadth. The composer Andrew Norman’s “Play” is also up for contemporary composition, on an album by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Miguel Zenón’s “Identities Are Changeable” has a nod for best Latin jazz album; and the Cedric Burnside Project’s “Descendants of Hill Country” is up for best blues album.

Other crowdfunding outlets have become familiar sights in the Grammy catalog. ArtistShare, a company founded in 2003 that has a partnership with the Blue Note label, is represented in three jazz nominations: the Gil Evans Project’s “Lines of Color” and the Maria Schneider Orchestra’s “The Thompson Fields” are up for best large ensemble album, while a saxophone performance by Donny McCaslin on “The Thompson Fields” is a contender for best improvised solo. Three of Ms. Schneider’s albums that she made using ArtistShare won Grammys.

Now, to extend Kickstarter’s reach in music, the company has hired Molly Neuman, a veteran of the indie scene, as its head of music. In a recent interview at the company’s spacious headquarters in a former pencil factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Ms. Neuman described a loose but ambitious mandate to make Kickstarter more useful for listeners seeking new music, and more responsive to the musicians who sign up for it.