Ingenious: Free Music If You Talk About It on Facebook or Twitter

After hearing about CASH Music’s new web apps, which allow artists or labels to give a free song to anyone who tweets or posts a Facebook update about their music, we’re wondering why nobody thought of this before. Artists are constantly encouraging their fans to spread the word about them; all that was missing was […]

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After hearing about CASH Music's new web apps, which allow artists or labels to give a free song to anyone who tweets or posts a Facebook update about their music, we're wondering why nobody thought of this before. Artists are constantly encouraging their fans to spread the word about them; all that was missing was a way to make sure they were doing so, and CASH Music has solved that problem.

It all started when the code-savvy cellist Zoë Keating began work on a tool that would allow people to download a song from her Into the Trees album in return for tweeting a link to all of their followers on Twitter. She asked the folks at CASH Music for some help in finishing the project, and they managed to get twitter.zoekeating.com online in time for the SXSW music festival, as was her goal.

CASH (Coalition for Artists and Stake Holders) Music, founded by Throwing Muses' Kristin Hersh and fellow musician Donita Sparks, then put together a Facebook version of the code, and released both of them as open-source software, free for the taking.

Tweet-for-Track and FBConnect-to-Track, built using the Twitter and Facebook APIs respectively, are now available for any artist or label that wants to leverage these social networks' massive audiences with a highly contagious viral message. Everyone who sees the tweet or Facebook status update then has the opportunity to grab the track in return for spreading the word even further, and that's not all.

"You can require the user to tweet a specific phrase, follow you or not, and the download can be sent via straight HTTP or secure[ly] using Amazon S3," reads CASH Music's announcement. "All you need is a Twitter account and a webhost that can deal with PHP."

The Facebook version varies slightly, in that it allows people to download a free track in return for becoming a fan of the band, which automatically sends out a message alerting the user's Facebook friends that they have become a fan. In addition, users who became fans previously will also get access to the free track, allowing it to be rolled out to existing fan groups.

Using either tool requires a bit of technical know-how, but given how powerful they are, we expect many artists and labels to take advantage of them -- and for this concept to spread beyond music.

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