aaamusic | On 04, Oct 2010

PledgeMusic ( www.pledgemusic.com), the leading international direct-to-fan platforms specializing in raising funds for musicians to record and tour, has announced a groundbreaking new initiative with MySpace, which will help the world’s largest music community further engage with independent artists and their fans.

To coincide with the re-designed MySpace Artist Profiles and the launch of the platform’s new UK Artist Support innovation, Pledge Music has designed a custom built App that embeds directly into the profiles of both artists and fans.

The PledgeMusic App will provide independent artists the opportunity to work with their fans to raise funding for new projects in the form of ‘pledges’ and to create and manage pledge campaigns from within their MySpace profiles.

Benji Rogers, co-founder and CEO of PledgeMusic said, “I have been a MySpace user since 2003 and was amongst the first 100,000 users to sign up. This partnership between Pledge Music and MySpace will go a long way to help connect artists with their fans by engaging them in the creative process. It also gives them tremendous freedom and control over their work. The MySpace community is full of active and engaged artists who we feel will embrace this technology as another tool to help them along in their careers.”

Artists will be able to allow their fans to become a key part of the creative process by embedding the PledgeMusic App on their MySpace profile, offering them access to a range of exclusive, premium incentives while sending them exclusive updates and notifications throughout the duration of campaigns.

PledgeMusic also encourages artists to work with charities and to donate a proportion of all money raised to help causes near and dear to them. Artists have an option to make a donation from sales to a charitable organisation of their choosing.

The PledgeMusic App allows artists to run entire Pledge Campaigns directly from their MySpace profile making the whole process streamlined, efficient and easy to manage while empowering artists to take control of both the creative and commercial aspects of their careers.

No money is taken from fans until the entire pledge target is met and artists retain all rights to their music.

Barry Flanigan, Director of Audience & Business Development at MySpace UK, said “MySpace is proud to have a reputation for genuinely bringing fans and artists closer together and Pledge clearly share similar ambitions.  The PledgeMusic App is a brilliantly innovative service that gives artists a unique flexibility in funding their projects, while allowing fans to have a clear and definable role in supporting their favourite acts”