NYTimes.com berichtet über die interessante Non-Profit-Plattform CASH Music, die von Musikern für Musiker gemacht ist und Großes vorhat. Hier zeigt sich einmal mehr, dass Publisher/Labels/Verlage in weiten Teilen Softwarehäuser sind/sein sollten:

CASH, which stands for Coalition of Artists and Stakeholders, is part of a growing market of behind-the-scenes companies like Topspin Media and Bandcamp that handle the kind of business tasks that used to be the domain of record labels — marketing, merchandising and Web distribution among them. But unlike most of those companies, which take fees on transactions, CASH offers its services free and uses open-source software that can be customized by anyone. In that way, it is a kind of Linux for musicians.

CASH was founded by two performers, Kristin Hersh and Donita Sparks, as a way to release their music, and has grown into a portfolio of Web tools for artists and labels. It offers ways to stream music securely and control access to files online, as well as widgets to sell music, collect e-mail addresses and do various forms of marketing.

In der Selbstbeschreibung von CASH Music wird es auf den Punkt gebracht:

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.

Interessant ist auch dieser Beitrag von NYTimes.com, in dem das weitere Umfeld der “Direct-to-fan”-Plattformen wie bspw. Topspin, Bandcamp, FanBridge und ReverbNation skizziert wird.