Fairsharemusic

fairsharemusic was a commercially run social enterprise and award-winning[1] music download store where legal downloads were combined with charitable donations. Based in the United Kingdom the organisation promised to pledge 50% of the net profit from every purchase [2] to one of twenty-two partner charities.[3]

fairsharemusic
LocationLondon
OwnerLee Cannon
FoundedJune 2010 (2010-06)
Websitewww.fairsharemusic.com

The service has been offline since March 23, 2014. A statement from the company's Twitter account on March 29 claimed the site was down due to technical problems and would return soon.[4]

Background

Fairsharemusic was the brainchild of Lee Cannon, a social entrepreneur with extensive experience of working in the music industry.[5] Through working on projects such as Live Aid, Cannon saw what could be achieved when harnessing the power of music to help others.[6] Beta testing of the site began in June 2010 followed by a successful public launch in 2011.

The main premise of fairsharemusic is centred on the concept of Micro-donations [7] whereby individually the amount of money donated from each track is small but collectively they make a huge difference.[8] The organisation is also a pioneer of Embedded generosity through their integration of charitable giving with the purchase of music at no extra cost to the consumer.

Features
  • White label version of the store provided for each charity partner.
  • Extensive music library of 22 million high quality (320 kbit/s) DRM-free MP3s.
  • Playlists tailor-made by music industry professionals and charitable organisations.[9]
  • Regular features with popular and up-and-coming artists.
  • Digital locker for multiple downloads of paid-for-tracks.[10]

Charity donation[2]

fairsharemusic aimed to be fully transparent in detailing where the money spent on every purchase ended up. As well as pledging 50% of net profits to charity they also guaranteed to pledge at least 4p of every track price regardless of whether they made a loss.[2] For example, one album costing £7.99 would result in a 32p donation to charity.

The store had the backing of twenty two charity partners including Amnesty International, British Heart Foundation, British Red Cross, Centrepoint, Friends of the Earth, NSPCC, Oxfam, Sue Ryder Care, Teenage Cancer Trust, World Wide Fund for Nature, Action Aid, Alzheimer's Society, Cancer Research UK, Keep Britain Tidy, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Nordoff-Robbins, RSPCA, Vinspired, Virgin Unite, War Child (charity), WWF (conservation organization), Youth Music and Arlington Futures.[3]

gollark: Mostly they just borrow ridiculous amounts of money.
gollark: In governments they'll just borrow more, yes.
gollark: There have been calls to scrap the TV license and just fund it through taxes. Which would be basically the same functionally.
gollark: No, I mean the "we do worse things so you can't criticise this somewhat bad thing" thing does not make sense. Unless you want to justify this "PBS" on its own merits, in which case do so, or actually don't as I don't really care.
gollark: That's a very stupid argument, but I'm not sure what to call it.

References
  1. Guardian, The. "Winners 2011", The Guardian. Retrieved on 2013-05-07.
  2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-11-03. Retrieved 2011-11-10.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-03-29. Retrieved 2013-05-09.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. http://www.startups.co.uk/fairsharemusic-lee-cannon-and-jonny-woolf_1.html.
  6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-07-18. Retrieved 2013-05-09.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. http://www.startups.co.uk/fairsharemusic-lee-cannon-and-jonny-woolf_1.html
  8. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-07-18. Retrieved 2013-05-09.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. http://www.foe.co.uk/news/johnny_borrell_playlist_24261.html
  10. http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/104443-fairsharemusic-legal-and-ethical-downloads
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