CASH Music

New shirt!

maggievail — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 21:31:25 -0700

$25.00

Night Owls Print Shop made a shirt to benefit CASH Music.

100% cotton unisex black Anvil 980 tee. Printed with discharge ink, for a soft wearable feel. Many sizes available including: Adult Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large.

Please consider supporting an open, nonprofit, and always free solution for artists.

All proceeds go towards CASH Music.

Try out a simpler way to get started

jessevondoom — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:01:00 -0700

As of yesterday anyone newly signing up for our hosted beta test is met with a simple walk-through, letting them go from signup to published email-for-download or digital purchase page in under five minutes.

We’re the first to admit that what we’ve built so far can be hard to use. It’s an ambitious idea and the technology is primarily being built by a single person. The current version of the admin app was built to put an interface on much of the code that lies beneath. We’re currently reworking the admin to give a better user experience — all the power in the platform now, but centered around the people using it rather than the code on which it’s built.

This new simple mode walk-through is a bridge from what we’ve got now to where we want to be. It lets anyone quickly set up and customize a new page, with full advanced mode just a click away.

Give it a try by signing up for a beta account today — and current users can try it out just by visiting the system settings page.

https://x.cashmusic.org/signup/

PS: Please remember this is part of our beta test. We want to hear about your experiences, so please let us know what you think. The examples in simple mode rely on your Google Drive for file hosting, but switching to advanced mode lets you use Amazon S3 for higher traffic and make further customizations to your page or embeds.

Getting simpler

jessevondoom — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:33:28 -0700

We’re jumping on a plane to SXSW tomorrow, but first I wanted to show a little of what we’ve been working on. Meet “simple mode” — a new way to introduce people to the CASH Music platform. It’s a first step towards making things easier for everyone.

The video above shows someone going from first-time sign-in to fully published email-for-download campaign in under two minutes. We’re polishing a few things, but it should be part of the hosted beta some time next week.

More soon!

Knowledge is power.

maggievail — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:44:24 -0800

We’re ready to announce the next phase of our mission: EDUCATION.

The long term goal of CASH Music is not just to build open source tools for artists, but also teach them how to use these tools, help them navigate the ever-changing music business, and create a community of like minded thinkers and do-ers.

We’ve been very focused on development of the platform for a long time - our road map is comprehensive and most of it is still being built by a single person. Now that we’ve launched the hosted beta platform we’re especially focused on making everything easier to use, adding more help docs, and finishing up key functionality that artists really need. In light of this transition it seems like the perfect time to announce that we will be launching an educational component to CASH later this year.

We envision our educational curriculum to be in the same spirit as everything we do around here: open, collaborative, ambitious, and hopefully game-changing. We intend to tackle topics like copyright, publishing, digital and physical distribution, online tools (ours and others), publicity, royalty statements, records labels, touring, crowdfunding, radio, policy issues, and so much more. These modules will be in the form of blog posts, video hangouts, white papers, conferences, etc.

We want you to help us shape what this will look like and we want you to be a part of this from the ground up. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WGFTQWP

The first module will be coming in April. Stay tuned!

(And please be in touch if you’d like to help out. We’d love to have you be a part of it!)

Let's make this easier

jessevondoom — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:14:00 -0800

So our hosted beta has been up for a few weeks now, and we’ve been collecting feedback, fixing bugs, and shuffling our development plans accordingly. So far the feedback has been really useful, especially one major theme:

“I like where you’re headed with this, but it’s not there yet. It needs to be easier to use.”

We totally agree.

So we’re currently working on three different things to make the experience better, starting with the things the platform currently does well before we transition into new features and connections:

We’re overhauling the writing in the platform itself. This means introducing better general instructions, revamping and adding new help text, and getting it all ready for translation and multiple language support.
We’ve updated the front-end code in the admin so it works nicely on mobile phones — this was step one in a process of reworking the actual pages themselves so they’re based on how people use them more than how the code works.
We’re building an all new “simple mode” for new users so no one feels thrown into the deep end. You can see early mock-ups here.

For the curious, the mobile-friendly changes were pushed live to the beta site this weekend. You can see them just by playing with your admin dashboard. (Sign up here.) For the lazy, here’s a short video showing the differences as we shift the admin from desktop to mobile mode:

We built this using Zurb’s amazing Foundation framework. Foundation is a great front-end tool that standardizes how we deal with layout from desktop to mobile — responsive design means we write the forms once and the framework adapts them to fit the screen they’re on. Foundation has been so flexible and easy to work with that we’re going all-in. We’ll soon be using it for our email templates and even for default page and embed templates.

Moving to Foundation was the first step in all of this. We weren’t going to make a big deal of it all, but to be frank: the responsive phone stuff is just neat. It also serves as a great starting point in a larger conversation about usability. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the simple mode stuff. We’re trying to find the right balance between “easy” and “powerful” and it felt like the right way to go.

More soon!

Open for testing

jessevondoom — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:32:00 -0800

Today we’re opening up the hosted version of our platform to public testing. It’s exciting. And terrifying. There are things we’re still working on, changes to be made, and almost no documentation. But the simple truth is that it works really well for some things, so we figured it was better to share early.

Your feedback might bring new ideas to the surface or reflect some of the changes we’re planning to make. Either way, we’d rather have people using it than not, and it’s time for us to build a real community around this effort. What better way than to open it up to people?

In the coming weeks we’ll be writing more, making changes, and adding demos. We’re planning on turning the beta version into the first full version over time — you just get early access. And if you’re wondering: it’s free now, it’ll be free then, and it’ll remain free forever.

Any financial transactions happen in your accounts (Paypal, etc) and we don’t touch a penny. And this version of the platform is the same as the downloadable version — 100% open source so it’s also free in that sense, too. We want to make something lasting.

So sign up for a test account. Join the community. Play around. Help us build something great.

http://cashmusic.org/signup

The details

The whole idea for the platform is that you bring your accounts, connect them, and use what you already have to make what you need. So connect your Paypal account and your S3 account and sell a download. Connect your MailChimp and your Google Drive: email for download. We provide the workflow, a page you can publish, and an easy (and customizable) HTML5 embed code so you can make it live anywhere.

Right now the platform does a good job with digital sales, download codes, email collection and email for download promo, downloads via login, and some fun with social networking. We’ll be documenting all that stuff and providing demos in the coming weeks.

As with anything in a testing phase there are caveats:

We’ll be doing a lot of work on the interface and user experience. The current organization is fixed, but there’s a lot of redundancy in the interface, some confusing terminology, and a lot of pointy bits we’d like to smooth out, especially on mobile.
Help docs and walkthrough. You’ll see a help link on every page and an FAQ. Neither of these things is comprehensive, and improving that experience is critical. We’re also working on a quick introduction to the platform for new users. You all are just being thrown in the deep end, but we really want to help you swim.
It’s still a little “you need a friend who knows HTML” heavy. We include default templates, but to really publish a page or customize HTML5 embeds you’ll need a little code. That’s not the long-term vision, just the right-now reality.
Venues. Okay. This is going to sound a little silly. But at the moment we’re all working with a single pool of venues in the calendar. Add a venue and everyone sees it. Edit a venue and it changes for everyone, like Wikipedia. Long-term we’ll change this so everyone gets access to a central source of data and you’ll be able to add venues that are just yours. But for now, it takes a village.
The final caveat is that I’m probably forgetting about a half-dozen caveats. If you run into something you think is trouble just let us know and we’ll look into it. We want your feedback. Drop a line at help.cashmusic.org or check out our github account.

There’s a whole lot more coming soon. Hopefully this test gives you the shape of things to come. If you want to help us, just use it. Tell us what you think. Tell a friend. We feel an open tool like this is vital for artists, and we need you to help us finish it.

Godspeed!

State of the u̶n̶i̶o̶n̶ organization: 501(c)(3) status, a look back at 2012, a look ahead to 2013

jessevondoom — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:37:00 -0800

It’s been a busy year for us, and as it draws to a close we’ve been looking back on 2012 and planning for 2013. I guess this post is a bit of a year-in-review kind of thing, a bit of news, and a bit of a look ahead.

Most people following our growth see platform updates or speaking engagements, but the work we do to establish, build, and fund the underlying organization is less obvious even though it eats a lot of our time. So I’ll start there.

501(c)(3)

The big news: the IRS has denied our application for 501(c)(3) status. The review process lasted over four years, and like many other organizations dealing with open source software it was an unexpectedly complex process. We talked about it before and got a lot of feedback from other organizations facing similar issues. (The comments were eaten when we migrated the blog to Tumblr — sorry! Short version: open source appears to be a contested issue inside the IRS and decisions are both lengthy and a little inconsistent right now.)

We see the denial as another step in the process, not an endpoint. The most important aspects of a nonprofit organization have less to do with tax status and everything to do with being a mission-driven entity that cannot be acquired or owned by individuals or a corporation. These things still apply to us as a state-level nonprofit. The lack of 501(c)(3) status makes fundraising a lot more difficult for us (as a nonprofit we cannot take traditional investment — no ownership to give away — and grants and major gifts are much harder to find without the federal status that allows donations to become tax write-offs.)

We plan on trying to re-apply. The first application was prepared by me, very much not a lawyer, and now we have a wonderful team of pro-bono lawyers helping us with legal issues. We’re figuring out our options, but have decided firmly that we’re moving forward as a nonprofit even if that means funding is far more difficult. We’re probably facing a long process, but we’re doing so with our mission of artist sustainability firmly intact, with stewardship of the platform in the hands of an organization that cannot be bought or sold, and with the guidance of a great board.

A look back at 2012

This year started with our Kickstarter campaign, saw us graduate from the Mozilla WebFwd program, and has brought the platform from infancy to the point where we’re now in early testing of the hosted version. It’s been an exciting year, so here are some highlights:

The Kickstarter was an amazing success, with the support of over 1300 people
CASH was written about in the New York Times, GOOD, ReadWriteWeb, and others
We got to speak at the first XOXO conference here in Portland
We released three new versions of the platform, downloaded over 3200 times
We finally wrote developer docs, with more to come
Pascal Finette, Molly Neuman, and Andy Weissman joined our board
The hosted multi-user version of our platform is here and in testing
The WordPress plugin is available for all single-user installs
New website, now with 100% more t-shirts for sale
I grew a mustache (Okay that was gross and it’s gone now, but still)

What’s next in 2013

As much as we got done in 2012, we’re trying to up the pace for 2013. We’ve been working on an educational component to complement the platform and details about that will start to surface in the first few months of next year.

In January we’ll expand the current test of the platform to more people, with the goal of getting the free hosted version of things live soon after. We’ve been pushing on infrastructure for a long time, but now we’ve got the single-user/multi-user versions on a single release cycle we’re entirely focused on improving the user experience and solidifying performance in the multi-user version. This means we’ll be rapidly iterating and getting to new features and new integrations.

So by mid-2013 we’re hoping to be at a place where we’re seeing more adoption of the platform — on our servers and downloaded. We’ll tie that all in with an educational program that will address online strategy, policy, and best practices. We’ll be talking organizational membership and doing everything we can to solidify the nonprofit and move this forward towards long-term sustainability.

The time to make real change is now. We’re going for it.

Happy holidays!

Building the hosted platform: a closer look at the details

jessevondoom — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:59:00 -0800

Last Friday we started sending out early test logins for the hosted version of our platform. It’s a huge and exciting milestone for us, and I wanted to take some time to talk about exactly what we’ve built and where it’s going from a technical perspective.

(And for the curious: we’ll be moving to public testing sooner rather than later. But this is an early beta. More soon!)

For folks who don’t care about the nerd stuff this is an easy post to skip and this is the place where you jump. For the rest…

The big accomplishment with hosted was that we did it without forking the code. What that means is that we took the time and care to teach the platform how to work for a single-user on a shared-account webhost and how to scale up to thousands of users on multiple servers in the cloud. It meant adding a new installer, teaching third-party connections to work in new ways, securing user accounts, and thinking through user profile pages versus deeper site integrations.

This was a particularly interesting challenge, but the end result is a platform that can grow into something special. The real power of open source is that it can truly be owned by the community it’s serving, and keeping the platform unified is a big part of that. It means that musicians can toe into what we’re doing then migrate to the same platform on their own server. It means labels can take the big hosted platform with them to any cloud provider they like and run a customized private version for their artists. And most importantly it means that any progress we make immediately benefits both people using the hosted and the single-user version.

For the brave, here’s a look at more details:

Third party service connections

Maybe the most significant difference between a single-user instance and the multi-user hosted version is how we handle third-party connections. For the single-user install we define API settings and store keys, secrets, whatever. That approach is fine for a site maintained for a single user, but in a hosted setting it’s not only bad practice but a significant security risk. The right answer is to use OAuth, or as close as you can get. So for OAuth-friendly services like MailChimp we implemented true OAuth with callbacks and even manage to do post-authorize events like selecting a mailing list. For services that don’t have OAuth we’ve implemented a pattern that mimics it — so you can safely enter your Amazon S3 credentials in order to grant us permission to access your files but without needing us to store anything other than the bucket name. Security and ease-of-use were our prime concerns. More here.

Configuration on disk or in memory

A single-user instance of the platform uses an ini file to store basic settings. This is great when you’re dealing with a single web server and you’ve got persistent on-disk storage. When you want to scale to multiple servers or work without persistent storage…well it’s kind of a killer. So we migrated system settings to work with either an on-disk ini file or with a JSON-based environment variable. In the cloud you simply set an environment variable for the app and all your settings not only persist through reboots, they make a round robin pool of servers work as a load-balanced team.

Multi-user of single-user system setting

This one seems obvious, but it’s a total pain to deal with. We added a new “instancetype” setting to the standard system settings. The core admin object intelligently stores this settings and passes it on to all views, so we can switch out any interfaces that should change or be hidden depending on the instance type. It was a long page-by-page process and we’re still tweaking a few things, but having this setting handy lets us fine-tune the interface as needed.

Custom sessions

Supporting multiple servers means standard PHP sessions won’t work. The normal solution here is to teach PHP’s sessions to talk to the database. But while we were rewriting session handlers we side-stepped the PHP $_SESSION object entirely, writing our own sessions so the platform won’t interfere with other scripts that rely on standard PHP sessions.

Cloud installer

Another day, another installer. We built the multi-user version with it’s own installer so the multi-user version can be easily deployed to Cloud Foundry or PaaS providers. Sharing is nice. In the long-term this makes it easier to get bigger instances up and going. Not only will this help labels or artists with high volume, but it also makes it easier for developers to use the platform as the starting point in building something new.

So all of this is to say that there’s been a ton of work to infrastructure in the last six weeks. Now it’s time to turn to features and user experience — fast iteration and big changes. Most of our work now will be focused on enhancing the admin, making it easier to publish pages, and carving into the long list of features we want to build out.

The foundation’s strong, time to start building.

Can Open Source Technology Save Music?

maggievail — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:12:00 -0800

We are now more than a decade into the technological revolution that turned the music industry upside down. Initially, it felt like there was so much possibility, that the internet might be the great democratizer, that it could empower artists to take more control over their careers, and ultimately allow them to see more of a percentage of income from their music. There have been some success stories, but it seems the vast majority of artists today are struggling even more, making less money yet paying more middlemen.

Recently musicians have begun to be more open about discussing their shrinking percentages in this music industry food chain. There’s been articles in the past few months about major indie artists that are unable to pay for their own health insurance, bands frustrated with payments they receive via streaming services, and apparently now Cat Power is even facing bankruptcy. When artists are willing to publicly talk about money it means that things are definitely taking a turn for the worse.

People often like to talk about disruption when discussing the music industry but the initial disruption was the easy part, think of it like screaming fire in a crowded theater, it’s actually putting something together after that chaos that is the difficult and interesting work. Every few years we see a different solution touted as the answer. First it was mp3 downloads, then it was internet radio, and now that the cloud is here it’s streaming on demand. This sort of technological determinism is market driven and frankly isn’t necessarily what most artists need or even want. Most music technology is generally listener facing, see services like Spotify and Pandora, as that’s where the true money is, and money is where the investment is. The goal is generally to scale while addressing listener behavior, not serving the artists who provide the music. Therefore a large amount of music tech has been built without actual viability for artists considered at all. There just isn’t much money in it so that element is often overlooked.

The majority of internet businesses revolve around a single core model aimed at solving a specific problem. Some current solutions like streaming and internet radio will only return real income with massive play counts, but not all art can or will scale. Other solutions provide a piece of the puzzle, but adding all of those pieces you get an unwieldy solution. A solution that asks artists to spread their presence across the internet and juggle various profile updates will not work in the long run for either artists or their fans that want easy to find and recently updated info in one place. No matter the approach, most of these solutions rely on proprietary technology at their core, meaning that no matter how much we chant “direct to fan” or “DIY” a musician has to plan on one or more partners, even if they’re signed to a label.

At CASH Music we’re building a free and open-source platform for musicians to use in promoting, distributing, and selling their music. We’re doing this as a nonprofit, but we feel that open-source and an open attitude is even more vital to the long-term sustainability of musicians. The platform will contain most tools artists need to interact with their fans: sales, social, streams, tour date management, email collection, etc. It will also integrate and cooperate with existing services like MailChimp or PayPal. So if there’s a service that you would prefer to use for a certain task and if it has an open API, it can be integrated and used with the CASH Music platform. To date we’ve released several distributed versions of the platform - meaning it lives on an artist’s own site - but we’re currently finalizing the pieces for a hosted version that’s coming very soon. The hosted version will allow artists with little to no technical knowledge the ability to use our tools.

We truly believe that there is no future for either side of this debate without cooperation. As Greg Kot so summed up so devastatingly in a tweet during the last Future of Music Coalition Summit: “Getting feeling with this internet royalty rate debate of a desperate industry eating its own, fighting over shrinking pie,” it’s a damaged industry. Ultimately it’s important to note that a healthy living for artists is vital to both a vibrant music culture and to the tech culture surrounding it. So in the end the question is less about technology, and more about the people working together around new innovations.

It’s easy to get lost in a red herring debate about whether technology has been a good thing or a bad thing for musicians. You can make arguments on both sides of the coin, but the reality is that the people and the innovation matters more than any technology itself. We don’t need a solution — we need a viable marketplace of solutions that can truly work together to fit the needs of every artist. This means open APIs, open data, and open-source solutions to bridge the gaps where there isn’t enough money to drive closed businesses.

This kind of open music marketplace can drive innovation, serve artists, and force incumbents to always provide new value for musicians. Open source by its very nature enables and encourages community and cooperation. We believe that this community of developers and musicians working towards common goals, speaking the same language, and learning about one anothers ecosystems is the best path for both artist sustainability and a healthy tech culture surrounding music.

****This is a repost of an article Jesse von Doom and I wrote for WFMU/Free Music Archive as part of a series supported in part by the NEA.

Progress report

jessevondoom — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 10:58:14 -0800

Time for an update.

We have a milestone on our roadmap this week called “Alpha Hosted.” It was slated for Monday but it grew a little. We’re running about a week behind on the goal of the milestone — getting the first people into the hosted version of our platform — but there’s been a lot of progress.

The big challenge so far has been getting the platform to a place where it can work as a single-user install or as a central multi-user web service spread across multiple web servers. It’s been a long process but we’ve finally got all of the settings in place and we’re running test servers on AppFog. In getting it all ready we actually made a full-on “cloud installer” that will let anyone go from zero to a fully-hosted instance running on AppFog or any other Cloud Foundry provider. Plain English: you’ll soon be able to install the platform on your own server, use ours, or even set up your own hosted service.

I’m not going to move the current milestone but we’ll tweak the roadmap as needed after it’s done. Things might get rearranged a little to ensure we get folks in there as soon as possible — the trick to being a single person development team is staying flexible and looking at big goals more than the details. So the bottom line is this: members and kickstarter folks will get to play around with things sometime next week, and with their help and feedback we’re going to be rolling out the hosted version (and new single-user installs) before the calendar turns.

So to the folks in the US taking a break to give thanks: enjoy! Lot’s more coming soon!

Sneaking out a release

jessevondoom — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 12:43:53 -0700

Last night we posted a new release of the platform. We’re only about halfway to our next release milestone, but there were enough general improvements that we felt it worth sharing. The web installer is currently pushing out the latest code, and there’s also an update script that’ll take you from any version you might have to current.

The biggest addition to this version — aside from major performance enhancements — are HTML5 and WordPress embeds to go along with the existing PHP element embeds. Every element page now shows short-codes for WordPress and HTML5. For WordPress you need our official plugin and the platform running side-by-side with a WordPress.org install. For HTML5 just copy and paste to any site out there, Tumblr, another hosted CMS, anyone that allows HTML/JS content.

We’re still kicking the tires on these new embed types but they’re a first look at our deeper vision for the platform. We want to enable functionality that’s portable from site to site using embeds, programming libraries, or direct plugins. This is just the start, so expect to see more of this kind of thing in future releases.

Setup

For a new install grab the web installer and upload it to an empty folder on your web host. Visit the page in a browser and follow instructions.

To upgrade download the updater and upload it to the folder you originally installed the platform in. (The folder that contains the admin folder.) Just visit the page and go.

Introducing three new board members

jessevondoom — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:00:00 -0700

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in building this organization it’s that a nonprofit needs a strong board. We’ve been really lucky in that respect, and it’s time we grow to get more voices involved. We’ve started expanding the CASH board to include three trusted advisors. I’m really happy to add these new people to the list of board members:

Pascal Finette
Heading up the WebFWD accelerator (webfwd.org) at Mozilla, Pascal’s been a big part of our growth the last six months or so. Literally tireless he’s got deep roots in business and open innovation, having led Mozilla Labs before WebFWD, with loads of experience running and funding startups before that. @pfinette

Molly Neuman
Molly knows music as a craft and as an industry. She played in Bratmobile, The Frumpies, and PeeChees; manages Ted Leo and has played that role for others in the past; and is VP of Label Relations at eMusic. (emusic.com) Molly’s perspective is unlike any other, and this is about as natural a fit as you could imagine. @simplesocial

Andy Weissman
A partner at NYC’s Union Square Ventures (usv.com), Andy’s got a strong music background with extensive knowledge of the industry and the art. Andy introduced himself to us about a year ago and immediately demonstrated enthusiasm and an unrivaled understanding of both music and business that we weren’t likely to find anywhere else. @aweissman

So welcome to the new folks, and while we’re throwing around twitter links here’s the rest of the board: Dave Allen @daveatnorth, Anthony Batt @djabatt, Jonathan Coulton @jonathancoulton, Tishaun Dawson @battalion, Leslie Hawthorn @lhawthorn, Kristin Hersh @kristinhersh, Dick Huey @dhuman, Zoë Keating @zoecello, Nick Palmacci @nickpalmacci, Eric Steuer @ericsteuer, Tobi Vail @mstobivail, Emily White @emwizzle

Goodbye Jackson 1997-2012

maggievail — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 14:14:00 -0700

We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved mascot Jackson passed away on Saturday September 29th. You may not have known his name before now but if you’ve used any of our software, looked at our web site, or follow us on any social network you definitely know his face.

Mr Jackson “Bobo” Vail was also my constant companion and co-worker of 14+ years. He was a special being and I knew it from the moment I set eyes on him at the pound on that sunny June afternoon in 1997. As I said hello to all the dogs I was struck by what this scrawny dude with the big ears was up to. He was burying a portion of his food in a blanket, backing up, and then diving in to find it. He was entertaining himself with the only things he had - I knew then that he was going to be the best sort of trouble and I took him home. For over a dozen years I was lucky enough to be able to bring him to work with me at Kill Rock Stars - he loved greeting his co-workers, meeting new bands, and saying hello to old friends on tour. And occasionally curating compilations. Thankfully, once I left KRS last year and started working on CASH full time, I was able to continue working with him at home as he needed a lot of nursing and TLC over the last 10 months of his life.

Jackson was a truly wonderful dog that lived a long and full life, full of love, with many, many friends. May he rest in peace, no longer in any pain.

So, next time you log into your CASH platform give that guy a tip of the hat and a Good Afternoon.

Today is National Voter Registration Day!

maggievail — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:27:57 -0700

Today, September 25th, is National Voter Registration Day here in the US! To help you celebrate this patriotic holiday we’ve made it very simple to encourage your fans and friends to vote via your Twitter, Facebook, and/or homepage.

We’ve set up a special landing page with TurboVote, a non-partisan nonprofit organization that makes voter registration easy. There’s no branding or cross-promotion at all. Having a shared referral code lets us measure the impact a group of socially conscious musicians can have when working towards a unified goal - getting people to exercise their right and vote.

You can get links and widgets here: http://cashmusic.org/vote/

Oh and also, don’t forget to make sure that your voter registration is currently up to date as well - not only is there a very important national election on the horizon but many of us also have important state and local races further down our ballots.

Make your voice count!

Want to help?

jessevondoom — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:23:00 -0700

A lot of people have asked how they can help, and I always feel like we give lame answers. The truth is we need a lot of help, but have been so swamped we haven’t been able to make helping easy. So we’re trying to change that.

CASH Music is small. For the most part it’s me and Maggie doing the legwork — that means building the platform, building the organization, outreach, anything we might be doing as proof-of-concept work, etc. Not saying we’re busier than anyone else, but we’ve had to focus on shipping working code and building an organization to last — so things like documentation, roadmaps, and proper volunteer coordination linger behind.

We’re starting with a few specific areas of platform development that could use a hand, each of which is a decent starting point. If you’re interested or if you have any questions, just drop us a line.

The things we’re looking at:

API integrations We’ve got integrations for S3, Paypal, and MailChimp in place already. The platform understands the concept of third-party service connections, and adding them isn’t actually all that hard. We’d love to push a few additional connections sooner rather than later, specifically Google Drive, Dropbox, and Stripe.
UI/UX and front-end enhancements We’re happy with the general shape of the interface, but there are loads of custom controls we’d love to implement, mobile enhancements, D3 data visualizations, and even a conversion to Zurb’s Foundation framework. Bottom line: there’s no shortage of stuff here.
Documentation sprint We’ll probably try to do something Portland-local for this — grab a small group, some food, and find a place to sit, talk through the inner workings of things. Then as a group figure out where to start and what to write, in order to help someone get up to speed. The process is probably pretty obvious to a lot of people, but it’s something I’ve had a hard time with so finding that group would be a huge help — to me and the project.

That’s the main list for now — but we’re always game to talk to developers about what interests them about what we’re doing, so don’t be a stranger. We’ve also got a developer mailing list if you want to stay in touch.

Thank you to Mozilla and WebFWD

jessevondoom — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:10:55 -0700

Yesterday we graduated from Mozilla’s WebFWD accelerator program. It’s been an honor to be part of the program, and we’re so much better off for our time there. We’ve gained knowledge, experience, contacts, and most importantly friends.

In a landscape crowded with tech programs for early stage efforts, WebFWD distinguishes itself by aligning with mission-driven open projects trying to tackle major issues. We were part of a group of amazing projects with inspiring people all around, and got to see Mozilla’s hands on approach to improving the open web now and for the future.

A single sentence is inadequate for the sentiment, but thank you to Pascal, Diane, and Didem for their hard work, dedication, and faith in us.

And feel free to ask us anything if you want to learn more about WebFWD. It’s a great program, and if you have a project you think is a fit you should definitely apply.

Godspeed!

Negotiations by The Helio Sequence

jessevondoom — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 09:33:00 -0700

Negotiations by The Helio Sequence:

New record out today by The Helio Sequence. Definitely worth picking up a copy. It’s subtle and epic at the same time, and really well built through each track.

Also out today are new records from friends Amanda Palmer and Calexico — what else are folks looking forward to today?

New platform release

jessevondoom — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 09:55:00 -0700

Today we’re officially releasing the newest version of our platform. It’s a big step forward for us, and you can download it here. (Just upload the installer to an empty folder on your web server, visit the page, and let it guide you through install.)

Our main focus for this release was usability — overhauling the interface, making day-to-day interactions easier, and solidifying the platform’s foundation. We’ve added direct file uplaoding, improved download codes and paid downloads, redesigned the UI, and started sprinkling in previews of functionality to come. In a nutshell: it’s a big milestone for us.

Feature by feature

New interface
We redesigned the UI for look and to make the exerience more intuitive.
File uploads, improved assets
Now you can connect to Amazon S3, create a new release in our system, and upload fulfillment files directly to that release.
Digital purchase element with minimum-price options
Easily connect your Paypal account and sell direct, even using minimum-price “pay-at-least” pricing if you like. All Paypal order information is stored for your review.
Download codes
Download codes are easy to generate and export directly from a release or file detials page. They’ll work with a single file or with a release that has a dozen fulfillment files attached.
A preview of a more robust “People” section
The people section still features list management, but you’ll also notice pages for contacts and press links — a preview of more robust functionality coming soon.
More help text
Help for everything. Well some things. Proper FAQs in the help section explain basic steps, with screen-by-screen instructions for connecting third party services or embedding elements.
Mozilla Persona
Mozilla’s powerful identity protocol/service, Persona, is supported for logins and user identification. We support creating a consistent online log-in and ID system for the future.
Boilerplate
Each install comes with a basic CSS stylesheet and sample PHP so you can easily start playing with the platform just by copying and pasting.

What’s next?
This time around we focused on stability and usability. There’s more of that coming, but our next release is focused on two main things: providing a hosted version of the platform and releasing iframe/JavaScript embeds so elements can go anywhere. We’ll also add more file-hosting services for uploads, new elements, and more refinement to the user experience.

Members and Kickstarter supporters will be the first people to play with our hosted version, but it will be open to the public after testing. Today feels like the start of something, and we’re going to keep building and moving forward.

New release on Tuesday

jessevondoom — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:47:03 -0700

All the code is done on our next release. We’re doing cleanup and writing a last few help docs — but look for a new installer next week!

A preview of our next release

oldcashmusic — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:26:50 -0700

Today we pushed a new preview release out the door, along with an upgraded web installer and a script to update older installs. In it you’ll find new functionality like download codes, better asset syncing and browsing, secure downloads, attention to details in the digital download and email collection elements, and loads of bug fixes and UI enhancements.

This is a big step forward for us, but most of the enhancements are under the hood where we’ve improved workflow for developers and made it easier to get improvements out to everyone using the platform. Not only can we build things faster, but from now on an update is as easy as a click in the system settings menu.

Our next release at the end of June will bring many more user experience enhancements, simplifying the interface and making it easier to get started — as well as detailed documentation for platform users and developers alike. We’re really excited about the future, and can’t wait to see what you do with this as it grows.

Using the installer and updater
To install a new copy of the platform, just create a new folder on your web server and upload the installer. It’ll download all the files it needs and give you instructions to follow — answer a few questions and you’re good to go. Your server will need to be running PHP 5.2 or greater with permission to write to the disk, but the installer will check all that before doing anything and give you a specific error message if it can’t continue for any reason. We’ve tested it on hosts like Dreamhost and Media Temple, but settings vary from host to host. It would actually be very helpful to hear about any successes or failures so we can continue to improve the installer.

For an update, we recommend you first back-up your database. We automatically back-up SQLite installs but to be on the safe side just download your cashmusic.sqlite file. MySQL users should back up their database via whatever method the host offers. We’ve tested the updater in every valid configuration so if you installed a supported version of the platform successfully you should be able to upgrade just fine — but you can never be too careful.

After backing-up, just upload the update.php file to the folder you originally created for installing…you should see the admin, api, and public folders already there. Just visit the updater and tell it to go. It’ll grab your settings and do the rest.