D.I.Y.

Non-Profit CASH Music Adds Two Free Viral Tools

CASH Music (Coalition for Artists and Stake Holders) had released two simple yet powerful free applications – Tweet for Track and FB Connect To Track – that could become the cornerstones of many viral music marketing campaigns. But as awesome as these two pieces of code are, the stories behind their
creation and of CASH Music itself are even more powerful. image from blog.cashmusic.org

FBConnect-To-Track asks you to become a Facebook fan and then automatically sends out a "_____
just became a fan of…"  message to their friends to spread
the word. Existing fans are also offered the track. Tweet-for-Track offers a song in exchange for a tweet. You can require the use of a specific phrase, require that they follow you or not,
and the download can be sent using a link or secured using Amazon
S3.

CASH Music is the
brainchild of Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses and 50FOOTWAVE)
and indie musician Donita
Sparks. But the board of the non-profit now includes tech
savvy musician Jonathan Coulton, manager Emily White,
industry veteran George Howard and others. Their collective goal is nothing less than the empowerment of musicians with no expectation for financial reward by building open-source tools and services.

More From CASH Coming Soon…

CASH Music appears to be just warming up. "It’s our belief that the need for technology should never get in the way of promotion, distribution, or support of great music," states the group's manifesto. "Our goal is to help people in music translate inspiration into sustainability." Their plan is to  work with artists, managers and labels to build custom projects that are then released as open-source code available to anyone. 

image from blog.cashmusic.org
Tweet for Track was conceived and first coded by indie musician Zoe Keating to help create pre-SXSW buzz. Keating then encouraged Jesse von Doom and his team at CASH to improve it and make it available to others.

FBConnect to Track is the brainchild of manager Emily White and her client Brendan Benson who  were looking for ways to build his Facebook presence. The result is another CASH Music creation shared free with the rest of the music community. CASH also offers a free set of UI Tools that are a collection of music appropriate JavaScript, CSS, and ActionScript resources. More is planned for the coming months.

All require a bit of technical knowledge. But CASH has just added some how-tos for their latest creations and there's nothing that some outsourced help can't add to a web page in less than an hour.

CASH Music is a powerful concept created and led by a savvy group that deserve support. As they continue to fulfill their mission, what open course tools would you like to see them build?  And how can you help them create them?

Bruce Houghton on 04/20/2010 in D.I.Y. | Permalink | Comments (7)
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7 Comments

  4. I like the tweet for track one, and am using it with a few things. although i have to say it is still a bit buggy, but not to the thought of cash music – more twitter’s oAuth. there’s a way around it but that’s a differen story..
    the Facebook one is cool, but id rather use existing FBML to fan-gate content on a tab, rather than drive people away from the page.

  5. far be it for anyone to complain about free code, but jeez, i wish the twitter/facebook codes didn’t get c-blocked by each website. eg.. do you really want to give tweetforatrack control to post on your behalf via twitter. the real message sounds more ominous.. just like the page that sits between 3rd party links on myspace pages.. “do you really want to go to this 3rd party website, huh, do ya?” **Don von Fabio shakes his head**

  7. Absolutely it can, just set it up as a separate folder. The easiest way to do it would be to create a folder called “/tweet/” or “/fbconnect” or something, and just copy and paste all those files in the .zip file download into the folder you just created. Follow their how-to guides to register the app, customize it to taste, and ka-blam. Good to go. You should be able to access the page by going to “http://yoursitename.com/foldername/”
    Hope this helps.
    Chris
    tightmix.wordpress.com

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