Zoshpit Launches Australian Music Crowdfunding Site

If you follow music crowdfunding news, you know that Australia is a hotbed of such activity. To date, Pozible has taken the lead as a general platform for creative projects. Now Zoshpit has launched to focus on music crowdfunding while developing related services for musicians with the goal of becoming a DIY music platform.

I spoke with Zoshpit co-founder Julian Chong last week. Though currently populated with sample projects, Zoshpit is ready to go with a more official launch and publicity campaign beginning tomorrow. Though currently focused on Australian musicians, anyone is welcome to support Zoshpit's campaigns.

Crowdfunding Competition and Long-Term Goals

Prior to the launch of Zoshpit, the main crowdfunding platform in Australia that I was hearing about was Pozible where numerous music campaigns have taken place.

When asked about folks like Pozible and PledgeMusic, Chong explained that of course they were competitors but that he felt there was room for many companies in Australian music crowdfunding.

In addition to basic crowdfunding services, Zoshpit allows artists to upload and sell tracks with no fees other than the PayPal charge. Chong explained that it was the first of such features they hoped to add. In fact, he and co-founder Paul Batten envision Zoshpit as a platform for music services beyond just crowdfunding but they're taking it one step at a time.

Zen + Josh = Zoshpit

Chong and Batten started work on Zoshpit in 2012. They named the company after Chong's son Zen and Batten's son Josh. From Zosh they came up with Zoshpit and found themselves with a name that coincidentally evokes the moshpit.

The two had hoped to launch back in January of this year but ran into developer difficulties and ultimately had to move to a second set of developers to get the job done. Now they're finally live and looking forward to building Zoshpit into a site offering a more complete suite of services and tools for musicians.

Using Crowdfunding to Build a Music Services Site

Launching as a music crowdfunding platform seems like a solid place to start.

Crowdfunding is at the beginning of what should be a huge growth curve. Most everyday people I talk to have never heard of crowdfunding and Chong made the same observation about folks in Australia. To me that lack of general awareness at this stage indicates the potential for a much larger market.

Adding free track sales is a great next step. People that are excited about supporting a musician may well go ahead and buy a track while they wait for their pledge rewards. After campaigns for recording new music are complete then that can be offered for sale on Zoshpit as well.

Additional services can be introduced and iterated based on the crowdfunding process or on musician requests. For example, crowdfunders need to publicize their campaigns so publicity-related services would be a logical addition. Since musicians need publicity for lots of things, such an addition would also be useful beyond just a single crowdfunding campaign.

So however Zoshpit develops, music crowdfunding gives them a great place to start. It's not a sure thing but they're entering at a stage where the idea is still fresh and competitors within the music crowdfunding niche are limited.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.