We’ve known about Kickstarter’s plans to make the UK its next market for a while now, but the crowdfunding site has now set a date: 31 October.

Creators, including musicians, games developers and technology startups, can start building their projects now ready for launch.

“We thought the three-week gap would give everyone plenty of time to build and tweak their projects before launching,” explain the company’s founders in a blog post, which also stresses that this won’t be a separate version of the Kickstarter site just for the UK.

“UK-based projects will be listed alongside all the other Kickstarter projects… Just like every other project on Kickstarter, backers can pledge to UK-based projects from all around the world.” Kickstarter is also rolling out a new “streamlined international shipping option” for the US and UK, making global shipping easier.

A revolution for British music artists? Steady on. Kickstarter is a valuable service for sure, and it can be an alternative to a traditional label deal.

But along with rivals like Pledge Music, its impact is as much about artists having a bit more leverage when signing those traditional deals – the existence of an alternative provides more bargaining power. And, of course, labels and artists together can run Kickstarter campaigns too.