Cash Music - Open Source Tools for Musicians

Basically, these folk are building a load of open source software for musicians to use. Much as I think Bandcamp is great it's still a very much 'for profit' outfit. People have invested millions into it and they'll be wanting a return. Fair enough but open source stuff puts it all in the musician/label's hand.

Go and have a look at the site which explains how it all works - http://cashmusic.org/

They say it best in their own words:-

What Wordpress did for bloggers, we're doing for musicians. We're building a free and open platform that’s available to all artists, designed in partnership with artists and labels.

CASH Music is a nonprofit organization that builds open source digital tools for musicians and labels. Our mission is to help educate and empower artists and their fans to foster a more viable and sustainable future for music.

And from their About page:-

Everything in this business starts with musicians, but with all the money around music they're often the last to see any. Most of the artists we know are working so hard just to keep their heads above water.

The whole Internet thing was supposed to make things egalitarian, but it hasn't. It's mostly startups with big money and major labels making weird deals and everyone else working extra hard to just stay afloat.

Entire companies are being built around the idea that if they can finally make the Internet work for musicians then they can get rich. Some are making things better. Some are making things worse. But they're all doing it backed by millions of dollars on the promise that they'll deliver billions later — and in their world it's consumers (fans) and content (music, more specifically music copyrights.)

So we've built a lot of tools that actual, working musicians need and can use - we know because we're building them directly with artists and labels. Also, what we're doing is different because we're building it in the open where it's all totally free and doing it as a Nonprofit so someone else can't just buy it all up.

It'll be fascinating to see exactly how far they manage to get with it all. I know bollock all about coding but it sounds like a great project.

http://cashmusic.org