I don’t think I’ve mentioned this on here before, but in addition to being a Web developer and writer, I’m also a musician. And as a musician, I was blown away when I read Jordan’s piece about ProjectOpus.com over on his sumolabs blog.
Project Opus is a new resource for independent musicians that allows them to upload and share (or sell) their music with the Web. There have been other sites like this before (CDBaby comes to mind), but I don’t think any of them have been as user-friendly and easy to operate and understand.
When an artist uploads a song, they can choose to sell it for a dollar (Canadian!) or make it available for free. If they sell it, Project Opus gets 50 cents, and the artist gets 50 cents. If the artist chooses to make their song available for free, Project Opus provides an easy interface through which to add a Creative Commons license to the track. And the best part? There’s no DRM applied to tracks you purchase or download from Project Opus.
Now most of that seems pretty standard (I mentioned CDBaby, right?), but Project Opus takes one step further. When you buy music on their site, you can download it, but you can also stream it directly from the Project Opus site using their Flash music player called “Opus Player.” On top of that, you can embed the Opus Player in your Web site or blog so your visitors can listen to your music, too.
When I finish redesigning roblindsey.com, I’m going to try using the Opus Player in the music section of the site. That will accomplish two things:
- Allow my visitors to stream my music from within my Web site
- And have my mp3s hosted by a third party, reducing my bandwidth
I’m capable of doing both of these things myself, but Project Opus is free. So, I’m willing to give it a shot. Once I get some more experience with Project Opus, I’ll write more. But for now, I encourage any independent musicians to check it out and give it a try.
