We are delighted to fund Dutch-based Tribe of Noise, the owners and stewards of Free Music Archive (FMA) – the world’s leading source for free and royalty free music. Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors download 2TB of openly-licensed music from FMA’s servers. Their project will integrate Web Monetization into the platform while leading a community discussion about how creators and users can benefit from Web Monetization tooling built on open and sustainable web standards.
Since 2008, Tribe of Noise has built a track record of publishing content under Creative Commons (CC) licenses, developing a global community for musicians and media makers. They are stalwart “open” advocates designing and executing direct monetization models for CC-friendly creators. When they purchased FMA in 2019 they wanted to both upgrade the site’s capabilities and safeguard its mission of free and open access to reusable music. Now, with a Grant for the Web award, they can begin to enable creators to share content with the world under their own CC conditions while FMA visitors can reward creativity, context, and services.
"When we applied for Grant for the Web we could not imagine the impact of COVID-19 on the music industry. I am more energized than ever to lead a Web Monetization research and development team. Let's enable creators to share content while visitors can reward creativity, context and services – without compromising free and open access, people’s privacy, and community norms." – Tribe of Noise CEO Hessel van Oorschot
Grant for the Web is excited to work with the FMA team because we like their learning-by-doing approach. In these early days of the program and the ecosystem around Web Monetization, it is essential we have grantees willing to experiment, fail, ask for help, listen to the community, and continue to push on what is possible for new business models on the web.
With this grant, Free Music Archive will:
Read more about Grant for the Web's early awardees.