The way forward for CASH Music, why it matters, and how you can help.

Or: A fundraising plan for CASH Music, part two.

8 min readNov 14, 2016

I’ve spent some real time trying to figure out if the work I do with CASH is enough. Should my time be spent elsewhere? Something “more important?” My answer is a resounding “fuck that.” I’m all-in with CASH Music, and it’s time to fight for artists harder than ever before.

So how do we fight?

We’ve always seen CASH as an economic action. A new way of empowering artists and evolving past the mechanisms of industry that have held them down. I downplay that radical side of what we do but it’s the side that motivates me. Artists are leaders and keepers of our culture. Art is our safest space. In our new reality there will be lots of people creating new protections for government, civil society, and the press. Who will fight for artists outside of traditional business structures? We will.

We’ll fight because someone has to. Art is too important to the world around us, too influential on society to leave to industry alone. We will fight — and that “we” has to be bigger than ever, an inclusive community united by a common mission: to fight for musicians and ensure sustainable careers in the arts. It’s bigger than just the boundaries of our little nonprofit.

So many people talk about the value of great art when times get hard. “Great music is fueled by hardship,” and other platitudes. They ask artists to champion a cause, to turn personal struggle into cultural power without care for the well-being of the artist. We need to focus on them as the cause. Hardship doesn’t make great art any more than joy — artists make great art and in turn that art unites us in ways that words and numbers can’t.

Music and art help us find a path to walk in the darkness. Art is one of the first things suppressed by fascists. Supporting artists and shielding their art from governmental and corporate influence is a moral imperative.

We’re serving that mission three ways:

Tools and functionality. We’ve built a platform of tools that is totally free and open. This is direct empowerment on the web; allowing artists complete control over how they sell music, interact with their audience, and connect to new people.
Knowledge and education. Watt. Watt is more than just a publication—it’s education for, about, and by independent artists. We’re amplifying artist voices and talking about what works and what doesn’t. We’re growing Watt into a home for reporting, research, case studies, and more from artists.
Access to capital. The Revolving Fund. An experiment in funding projects with short-term, no-interest loans.

So how do we fund it and grow?

For two and a half years we’ve been funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation but that funding came with a three year maximum. On March 1, 2017 it runs out. Our nonprofit vision doesn’t exactly fit into the funding plans of arts foundations. It doesn’t fit with foundations funding media or technology or economic change. Foundational funding is hard, slow, and can fundamentally alter your mission if you’re not careful.

We’ve heard many times that we should convert to a for-profit/nonprofit hybrid or a B-corp. There are benefits, sure, but those structures don’t ensure the longevity of the organization as they are subject to sale. And if I’m being really frank, it’s vital that musicians have this kind of direct action and empowerment outside of for-profit industry—especially venture capital backed for-profit services.

And brands? We have great relationships with some and absolutely want to forge more, but not as the foundation for our operating budget.

We’re looking to find our baseline funding from our community, and hand over a fair bit of governance to them as well. We want to grow into a movement and we’re willing to put it all on the line for that goal.

So our main play: we’re starting a friends/membership program.

We refuse to make any part of our solution pay-to-play so we’re not talking about customers for the platform or for Watt — we’re creating a program where people join with a recurring donation, get perks, and have a real say in the direction of our organization. Legally it isn’t a co-op because we’re going to remain a nonprofit, but think of it similarly: lots of people contribute to our budget in small but meaningful ways, and we turn over aspects of governance and decision making to the community.

Details:

The membership program will be able to take signups by the end of November.
Priced at a minimum of $5/month or $55/year, with $9/$99 suggested, but participants can pay more if they want. The goal is at least an average value of $9/month/person.
Initial offering will include a regular flow of new/rare/debut music from CASH-friendly artists and labels. Every member gets a quarterly vote on priorities and organizational direction including product roadmap, Revolving Fund beneficiaries, etc. And all members get access to a members-only store with test pressings, exclusive merch, exciting offers from partner artists and labels.
Later on we’ll roll out some form of more official support for members as well as other perks.
The emphasis is on building community and sharing the load.

We’re calling this “The CASH Music Family” and it will live at family.cashmusic.org.

For it to work well enough to keep the organization in its current state we’ll need to find somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 subscribers by March. It’s no small task, so we need to get the help of high-profile artists and other cultural leaders to spread the word. We’re rewriting and reworking our entire web presence, as well as our storytelling. We have all the pieces in place. Now we need our community to help us tell our story on social media, in newsletters, and beyond.

The plan will provide a funding base through community rather than through the grace of a foundation or handful of wealthy donors. This gives us a stable foundation we can build on top of with grants, donors, and corporate sponsors. It’s a new approach to nonprofit funding that’s as unique as the organization itself.

We’re actively working to prioritize our work/services in case we can’t pull off enough support to keep CASH funded at the level it currently is. That said, we believe in this plan. We’re ready to let our community determine our future for better or worse. We think it can work, and it’s the best shape for the organization no matter what. It won’t be easy, but that’s why we’re making this plan and asking for help. It’s time to get to work.

Great. So funding aside, what are the next steps?

Let me break this out into each of our three focus areas:

Our platform. We’re finalizing the subscription functionality that we’ll build our membership on. This is patterned after the very first thing we built: the subscriptions Kristin Hersh is still using to this day. It will be available publicly by January. We’ve got language translations coming, new playlists and embedded players, and a host of general improvements. This means we’ll soon have email collection, physical and digital commerce with pre-orders, subscriptions, bundles, SoundScan reporting, social tools, tourdate embeds, and more. The platform is a complete tool for running a musician’s business, open so it won’t disappear, and all without a cut taken or a fee charged.
Watt. Watt is still on the upswing. Next up we’re introducing a few regular columns from musicians, deeper research pieces from journalists, and interactive visualizations that explore business models, royalties, and other complex subjects. The core of Watt is a publication built for sharing — the entire thing is an open API. We’ll pull tagged content into our platform to use stories as support and encourage others to use our search API to place the content on their own sites. We’re looking to spread Watt as far as we can.
The Revolving Fund. It’s so early, but reception has been wonderful. After solidifying the mechanism and introducing it as something members will help guide we hope to do a massive fundraising push in Q2 of 2017 to grow the Revolving fund from its current $15K budget to something closer to $150K. We believe it can be a vital source of support for many artists of all sizes.

We need your help. What can you do?

We’re making a push towards critical mass. We need to get the word out, we need to be loud, and we need to communicate how vital it is to protect and decentralize artist voices. Now isn’t the time for a handful of for-profit services to define what the world listens to.

Here’s how you can help:

Join. Become a member of the CASH Music Family and show people you support us. Every member counts, at any level.
Amplify the message. We need people to post about the CASH Family on social when we start rolling out to public. Email also helps, whether you’re talking to a few friends or sending to your whole mailing list. We’re a small organization, so every voice added to ours gets us closer to success.
Music and merch. Yes there’s a moral imperative to the work, but a lot of people will stay interested for the perks. Do you have music you’d be willing to share as a non-exclusive download? Would you be willing to make some co-branded merch for the store or make a one-off or limited edition of something? Let’s talk about how to make the Family store feel special — and of course we’re happy to talk about a revenue share. Our goal is a solution that’s works for everyone, including the musicians helping us.
Help us tell the story. We’re looking for musicians willing to help us tell our story in their own words, on video and on paper. Wherever you’re more comfortable. We’ll find outlets to run stories and push videos. We want to show people that CASH Music is a movement not just another nonprofit or web service.