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SONGFISH.com
Challenges Entered:
SONGFISH, a unique collaboration portal brings artists, writers, specialists, affiliates, professionals and buyers together in an open exchange of products and ideas. It's the entertainment business re-imagined for the age of digital delivery.
SONGFISH is an arts & music collaboration portal designed to bring Artists, Writers, Specialists, Affiliates, Services, Suppliers and Buyers together. It's the entire music business economy re-imagined as an open market. We can prove that selling songs in every form imaginable WITHOUT DRM (Digital Rights Management) not only is a viable model but also a sustainable one. We have exiting relationships with major music publishing companies seeking to explore new relationships and opportunities to sell high-resolution 96k 24bit audio files, mixes, and individual tracks. Ultimately we'll have our editor in a browser.
WHAT WE NEED:
Capital
Programming
Evangelism
Location
Nashville, TN
United States
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One More Thing...
This is also a personal mission of sorts. One of my partners found a bunch of kids playing in a Shoney's parking lot and took them in, fed them, cared for them, nourished them and steered them toward their inevitable future, only to lose them at the pivotal moment in typical feeding frenzy to someone "in the business." The rest, as they say, is history, or is it? Did he not know enough about the business, as they contend, or did he care too much? History will have to settle that one, but I promise you, he was right then and he'll be right again. About the next big thing. This is the cumulative (mashed) vision of several people who have longed to see things change for the better, born of unique circumstances. I say, wait until you see what's next. This is bigger even than that last thing, it reaches further into our metaphysical future than any heaven's lament. This is the future of music, of entertainment, of interaction. I know them, and I know him, and though he still suffers their loss to this day, he is better off in spirit than they are in wealth. We want to show that. We're not really about adorned culture, we're about ascendant revelation. The mirror we hold up to the universe may just be collected shards, each meaningful only when set against the greater human tapestry.
too vague
It isn't clear from the above what will differentiate Songfish from other DRM-free and CC-enabled music sites.
The proposal says "unique" etc, but please explain how that is so. If it is true I'd like to support this proposal. :-)
Thanks!
Thanks for the comment
Too vague? Hmm, let's see. Possibly not enough differentiation yet but we're working hard, spending a lot of our time evangelizing to the industry, tracking or chasing 80-20 content deals with existing publishers and relevant trade organizations like NARAS and NSAI. Not just CC but © material too. Most angel talks here have been with established writers with multi-million dollar catalogs or other visionary types who try or tried to effect change. This place they call music city, Nashville, is unique in its sense of community and caring, with expatriates from all over, especially East and West Coast. We started with thatsocial sensibility and tried to envision a site that was the online equivalent of a digital campfire. My designers are probably frustrated with me, in that we try and have tried multiple collaborative platforms searching for that one right combination. Here's the funny part. I'm not sure I could tell them even if I knew because I believe with all my heart that the best ideas have yet to come. My only consistent forward looking statement has been and is that I want to play the Internet. How I play and how you play should be different, for each of us to learn, to take something away from the other. The true implications of the semantic web are staggering in human history and we just want to be the soundtrack.
Interesting concept
Creative Commons licensing of music and written pieces holds a good deal of promise. Plus I'm a big believer in open markets, so I hope this concept takes off for the sake of the artists. Before throwing full support behind this one, however, I'd love to know how your angel and A round talks have been going. I'd also like to understand better what commitment you're asking from your industry partners.
There's some interesting opportunity for social change here (heaven knows the music industry might benefit from that). Whether you meet the criteria for financial sustainability remains to be seen. I also would love to see you expand on the voting and commenting mechanisms, to make sure that the best work rises to the top.
Swiss Army Rack
Thanks for the positive comments. Over the last couple of years I and some of my team have worked on three different start-ups in close succession, first, a dedicated security platform, second, an identity management platform, then this. Songfish was a labor of love, pushed aside for the others becuase I wasn't sure how it could be viable (and the others seemed more so.) Funny how at the end of the day what you really care about seems to preempt what you don't. In that also lies the germinator for this. I struggled with whether this actually fit the bill or not, but decided to take the chance for a reason. We're not about just DRM-free, or hi-res, we're about that perfect summer song for the prefect summer moment that you'll remember your whole life. We're about the elevastion of the human sprirt and condition above the everyday fray. If music is the sound of my generation, then songs are the coin of the realm. This is a collection of illuminations through lyric and verse, a study of craft and experiment, and a relection of life and love and loss through art and music. There's more to come. I can't wait. It took a personal battle with stage 5 cancer for me to reach this milestone. We are here to do what we love better than tolerate what we accept or attain. The true promise of the semantic web is to make us more than human.