Awesome Music, Innovative Business Plan

What do you get when you mix …

• the music streaming of last.fm with
• the viewer feedback of American Idol with
• the predictive power of idea futures markets and
• the payoff of Project Green Light or My Dream App ?

It’s SellaBand.

Users vote with $10 shares (or “parts”) who should get the green light for a trip to the studio. Sound familiar? Here’s the new twist — the investors in the winning band get some of the profits.

The totally liquid market lets you swap your investment to another band in a snap, but when $50,000 rests on one band their contract is triggered. I suspect this leads to some really interesting game theory applications as the totals get close (my math geekery is hard to suppress). Two bands have already made it – but this is not a competition that just ends, it is a continuing strategy to get new talent together with new money.

About the Author

Charlie Chambers

Charlie graduated from Harvard with an A.B. in philosophy and also has a M.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his programming work at IFRACTAL, his Sun Tracker and Lyrics Scraper were perpetual favorites on Yahoo Widgets.

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