The music industry is in a state of change, with no factor more important than the internet. What with file 2 file sharing sites gaining huge prominence in the early part of this century and the emergence of self promotion sites like MySpace, the industry has had to adapt and change to meet these new, digital times. This has been a somewhat slow process, but finally the industry is starting to get where it needs to be in the digital domain.

One of the most innovative and interesting developments of this new digital revolution is a record label called My Major Company. This is a record label like no other, the idea being that investors choose the artist they want to invest in and once a target of £100,000 is met, the artist records and releases an album. The revenue the album generates is then shared out between the artist, investors and the label.

This business model is a very interesting development for the industry as it gives the labels a chance to measure the approval of the music buying public in a very definitive way; no one likes wasting money on something they don’t believe in after all.

The system, of course, would be futile if it didn’t garner results. In this case, the results are album sales and the cash these sales generate. The results so far have been impressive. To date,  MMC have had a number one album, a number one single and more than a million record sales for one artist alone in France. One fan even made £100k from a £5k investment.

Notable successful artists include French musician Gregoire, who gave all his investors a cameo role in the video for No1 single Toi + Moi, in recognition of their part in his success. Joyce Jonathan is another, releasing her single in January this year and going gold with 100,000 sales by March. In times of dwindling album sales these are impressive sales figures indeed.

So Crowdsourcing has been a huge success for My Major Company, spreading the financial risk associated with marketing a new artist and building a solid and dependable fan base at the same time. It will be interesting to see how MMC’s business model develops over time and if this trend is replicated at other record labels.

One thing is for certain, Crowdsourcing is going a long way in the digital progression of the music industry.