The Free Music Archive, a long-running Creative Commons music platform, is running its first-ever fundraising drive. It will run from mid-November until mid-December 2015, and is offering donors shirts and stickers at various pledge levels. The Free Music Archive has existed for many years and has provided millions of users with curated, ‘some rights reserved’ audio tracks. Artists are recognizing the value of a progressive approach to distribution and licensing in the digital era, and the Free Music Archive seeks to promote their work with intent to support artists, and those who want to experience the Commons as it continues to grow.

The Free Music Archive began with a generous grant, and has been grant-supported in the past. This fundraising campaign is designed to engage its various communities: users, contributors, curators, artists, media producers, and more. The website has not seen significant changes since its launch, and is in need of upgrades to make it easier to use.

Specifically, FMA plans to make its in-page player more like other ubiquitous audio players, including scrub bars, waveform displays and volume control; to enhance search and allow users to browse by artists and albums, not just tracks; to support a wider variety of audio formats (the site currently only accepts MP3 files); and to release a new version of the FMA API for its dev community.

The money raised in this campaign will be used in hiring the Free Music Archive’s part-time developer on for a full-time year of work, in which time FMA will roll out these improvements. To donate, please visit www.freemusicarchive.org/donate.