I read on Indie Music Tech today about BuskerLabel: crowd funding platform for artists to distribute their music for free.

BuskerLabel is very similar to my site QuidMusic of 2004. I’d started it’s development earlier still, expecting to call it MusicPatrons.com. That, in turn, was based on The Digital Art Auction (which I thought up in 2000), but I figured that sponsoring the production and publication of a music track at a fixed price of a pound was a simpler proposition (T’DAA! was far too complicated/advanced – something for a decade hence).

As it turned out, the QuidMusic prototype both convinced me this model was the future and in particular, made me realise that I wasn’t necessarily going to pick the best value proposition to start with. QuidMusic would still only now just be beginning to gain credibility, primarily because it is only now that enough people are sufficiently disillusioned with copyright and the traditional record label deal that both artist and audience are open to a new, more direct and libertarian deal. Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans article of 2008 has helped too, along with Fundable.com and now KickStarter.com.

I knew that if I continued with QuidMusic I’d eventually end up as just another ‘also-ran’ with umpteen varieties of the same model sharing the market. I figured that I should therefore focus on my strength, building a back-end that would support all manner of similar sites.

And this is where I am today, still plodding along, working on that back-end, The Contingency Market and a simple demonstrator, 1p2U, just as the hare is catching its breath before the final straight…