It is great for culture to have these innovative new artefacts join the fray. But crowdfunding is not just for newcomers — blasts from the past can also get a second life by leveraging the same kinds of direct-funding mechanisms. That’s something I realised while observing two new crowdfunding projects this week:

• X Factor UK reject Janet Devlin is using PledgeMusic to finance the release of her upcoming debut album. In a music industry that has become risk-averse, The X Factor TV show, like crowdfunding networks, is itself a prolonged exercise in testing the viability of a potential act before signing. Devlin was voted out during the 2011 season’s eighth episode. That should have put paid to her pop music aspirations. But those ambitions are now allowed to live on by a crowdfunding initiative that refuses to let go of the fans the young singer nevertheless amassed during the show.
• Revered computer game developer David Braben is using Kickstarter to try funding development of a re-make for his lauded 1980s space exploration classic Elite. The title wowed the first generation of video gamers with its wide-open space-scape and wireframe crafts in 1984, when it occupied just 22k of memory. Now Braben says: “Elite: Dangerous is the game I have wanted Frontier to make for a very long time. We have had a couple of false starts on this over the years. We have been preparing; laying the technology and design foundations for when the time is right. And that time is now.”

In each case, crowdfunding sites are allowing creators to reboot failed ambitions. As they do so, are they trying to subvert a kind of cultural natural selection that has already given them ample opportunity to make it big? To desperately relive a future that they were not destined to see?

Not necessarily. In this world, you take what opportunities are available. Devlin may have been offered a record contract within minutes of her exit from the TV show, and her PledgeMusic effort may seem curiously professional already, with a tour already seemingly planned — but she appears to be approaching her recording genuinely independently.

Elite: Dangerous would not be the first “blast from the past” to be remade for games lovers. Such titles as Duke Nukem have recently been re-released for spangly 3D console engines, while Super Mario’s ever-advancing franchise is routinely remade by a new take on its classical save-the-princess narrative.

Indeed, we appear to live in a time of pronounced cultural revivalism. Hi-def remakes appear on our cinema screen at a rate of knots, boy-bands reform after acrimonious splits — all designed to extract money, a second time, from audiences who, back in the day, could spend only pocket money but who, now in their 30s or 40s, are the prime targets for buying high-priced arena gig tickets and 3D multiplex seats.

Until now, these revivalist cultural experiences have been the preserve of the same kinds of big-media culture producers and puppeteers who financed their blockbusters a generation ago.

But now, just like the brand-new innovative outputs that can be funding by the likes of Kickstarter, out-of-favour practitioners who never quite made it or whose glory days are long gone can also start anew. Not only does the new rub shoulders with the old, in our long-tail age – it is also mingling with the renewed, in what is simultaneously a virgin start and a curious afterlife for content.

But what if the ideal accompaniment to live TV was… more live TV?

That is what one London outfit, Showcaster, is hoping. It is preparing to produce a live video show called #Yappfactor to air during this fall’s Saturday-night The X Factor (UK) - not on the show broadcaster ITV, but inside the Zeebox social TV sidekick application.

Also on Thursday, Zeebox announced Viacom is joining Comcast Cable and NBC Universal as US investors and promotion partners – signatures which were not complete in time for last week’s US app launch.

The X Factor stream will see comedian and radio host Jake Yapp offer “tongue-in-cheek” observations to UK Zeebox users’ sofas while they watch the show on the TV in front of them.

Although many viewers have become used to reading and participating in text-based discussion and to Googling for information relevant to the shows they are watching, the introduction of parallel video in addition to the principal live broadcast could prove overwhelming and disruptive, not least to fellow viewers in the same room – like a friend interrupting every song with an annoying sofa commentary.

Although consumer surveys this year have routinely shown that TV viewers are using smartphones, tablets and laptops whilst watching TV, the research does not always prove an appetite to further indulge their same TV viewing on those separate screens. Many viewers may be multi-tasking, distracting themselves from TV with email, Facebook and other tasks. Recent Deloitte research showed the second screen is most often used for social discussion of TV shows, not for finding additional information about them.

Showcaster has previously produced live web shows allied to popular TV shows, but these have mostly aired after the core show has broadcast on primary TV. However, the firm in March broadcast to the web live video of the cast of Skins watching their own show while it aired on Channel 4.

Regarding #Yappfactor, The Telegraph reckons all of this means: “ITV is under threat of losing advertising revenues from The X Factor to a parallel programme run by rivals who plan to hi-jack the talent show’s viewers.”

But that is over-egging this pudding. The #Yappfactor show is experimental for Showcaster and its insertion in to Zeebox experimental for both parties.

“#Yappfactor is a purely editorial exercise for us,” Zeebox product and content development chief Simon Miller – himself a film producer – tells paidContent. “It is nothing more than commentary from an independent comedian – an extension of the alternative Twitter commentary we’re already been running.

“We’re aiming to drive our users towards watching the (TV) show, as the commentary doesn’t make sense unless you watch The X Factor live.

“There is no monetisation on the page: no sponsors or advertising, so there is no question about ITV’s revenues being targeted.”

However, part of Zeebox’s business model is having Sky Media sell display-ad sponsorships in app slots against particular shows. This summer, it sold Zeebox slots to Samsung BP against BBC Olympics broadcasts, for example.

This year, show makers are not just waiting until the last minute – they’re trying to sell digital music throughout the remainder of the X Factor series.

Each song performed during the live-finals stages of the contest, which began on Saturday night, will be available via iTunes Store for £0.99.

It’s a tactic Sky 1′s rival Must Be The Music show tried in September.

The songs are listed as copyrighted to Simon Cowell’s Syco, which produces X Factor and which pushes music out through Sony (NYSE: SNE) Music Entertainment.

ITV (LSE: ITV) is trailing their availability in shows and on its websites, where it’s linking out to iTunes Store through an affiliate link.

One catch – the songs can only be bought together, as an “album” package, with two together for £0.99.

The Arcadia retail chairman told GQ last month, prior to becoming a shareholder in a new Simon Cowell company that will jointly own his Syco label with *Sony* Music Entertainment: “The plan is to take it to Vegas … We’ll have a store. And it’ll all be online. You have 20, 30, 40 million people tuning in twice a week… You bring two or three hundred million viewers to a venue. It’s turning it up a peg.”

A Syco/SME spokesperson tells paidContent:UK: “Digital is a big part of what we do. It figures highly in what we’re doing. At the moment, I can