Brain Murmurs

The IMP beta starts Monday, June 11th, and we’re looking for artists interested in hosting their work on our site!

Who cares, right? Well we do and that’s pretty much the point. For years we as artists have been stuck using “social” networking sites to showcase our stuff. We didn’t like it so we made the Independent Media Project, a platform to launch your works across the globe and publish yourself, freed from the corporate machine. We’re an independent company of top software engineers and artists and we back artistic freedom from our core.

You can keep your blog, personal site or myspace and link them to IMP as an exponential means of promotion, networking & sales. Gather with fellow artists at IMP and promote your work all over the web. The site is designed to give you a place to share and promote your art. Search media from other IMP artists by genre, freshest content, or hottest ratings. Our price scaling system gives you the option to set a ratings based price, so if something costs more, everyone knows it’s worth it.

Browsing IMP is also a great way to make connections and collaborate. Through IMP’s contact and messaging systems you could even script films or write songs in league with other artists. Soon you’ll even be able to plan or see events and tours with future date listing and mapping interfaces. Everything you need in one nice tasty little package.

You can sell your work under several different Creative Commons licenses or plain old copyright, or if you prefer, just give your work away - whichever makes you happiest. This isn’t our get rich scheme - we don’t take a cut of your profits - we’re all artists too and we want this site for our own use, too. We just cover our costs with some non intrusive ads. Ads that do not blink or talk or wave at you or try to make you shoot the rapper for a free ringtone…

Suffice it to say, with think you should join us now at http://imp.fm/beta.php and give it a try. After this beta we will be taking the site live for all the world to see and love in July, so we want your feedback and content as IMP continues to grow. Feel free to write in and share your thoughts.

So come check out the site, we’re looking forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, send email to imp@brainmurmurs.com.

-The IMP Team

Additional Information:

What is IMP?

IMP stands for “Independent Media Project” and the concept behind it is simple: don’t steal from artists.

The site provides artists with a way to promote and sell their work and, aside from the transaction fees charged by Paypal, the artists receive 100% of their sales revenue. At no time will we require a share of the artists’ profits: we have donated our own time and money to create the IMP project, and all subsequent development on the project will be paid for by revenue earned through discrete advertising on the site.

IMP is more than a publishing site: it is a community of artists, art lovers, venues and bookers creating a virtual online scene. IMP is in cadence with the current trend toward rapid acceleration of culture via the World Wide Web. We see this in sites such as Myspace, Digg and LastFm.

IMP is a place for musicians to get free exposure and/or sell their art online

Artists can showcase their work in our ‘freshest’ feed, which presents the mostly recently posted books, video, and music on the site. Widely praised content will gain exposure in our ‘hottest’ feed. The content will be divided into three categories: music, literature and film. Prices will work on a sliding scale dictated by a rating system. The higher the rating of an artist’s creative property, the higher selling price. This will create an economy devoid of agenda from big corporations: a “media meritocracy”, where the price is based on popular value

IMP is a place for artists to network

IMP is also a place for networking. IMP features a tour builder that will enable artists and musicians to connect with venues and other acts and set up a tour without a dependency on a tour manager or booking agency. IMP will help artists to find each other. It will put the aspiring composer in touch with the film-writing prodigy. It will guide the band-less bass player to his future coterie of musical geniuses.

IMP is a place for users to find great music, books, and video

For the media lover, IMP is a source. It will free the average art consumer from dependence on the commercial industry to connect them to “good” music. Music with the best rating will be featured in the “what’s hot” section. A consumer will know the music is good because their peers have deemed it to be so. Our hope is to bridge the gaps between the regional indie federations while maintaining their uniqueness individuality and culture, albeit Romanesque in ideology.

How IMP works

Artists upload their books, music, or videos to the IMP website using their IMP Studio page. They are then able to select the pricing plan and license agreement under which their work is to be distributed. Works may be distributed for free, for a fixed price, or under a variable pricing plan based on the overall appeal of the art to the user community. Finally the artist determines the license under which their works will be sold or distributed. IMP supports regular commercial copyright as well as a wide variety of Creative Commons licenses.

Once the art has been uploaded and its options have been set, the art becomes available in the IMP ‘Freshest’ feed. Content in the feed are initially available to users for free, but users are required to supply ratings for the content they download. Once enough ratings have been received to establish an average rating for the item it will revert to whatever pricing plan the artist has chosen. From this point on users will have to pay according the artist’s selected pricing plan in order to download the item.

The more high ratings an item receives, the ‘hotter’ the item will become. The IMP ‘Hottest’ feed provides streams of high-quality books, video, and music available at the artists’ chosen pricing plan.

Filed under: IMP by Daniel