The Long Road

I thought some of you might be interested in how we got here. Starting a digital music service when the market is dominated by two players, illegal file sharing and Apple, is not the most obvious path. So why did we do it? And how?

Why is the easier question to answer, so I’ll talk about that now. It’s late, and the how bit can wait for another day.

Everyone at Mewbox genuinely loves music. Of the four people who have pulled this together, one has a background in music, both as a musician and an indie label owner. Another loves the DJ thing. One loves to run music events. And the other is not a musician, but loves music and has persuaded his sister’s band to give us some free tracks (more about that another day).

So, we all love music. Seeing as you’re here, I’d guess you do too. And the reason we set up Mewbox is simple – we want to share music with you, make it available to you, tell you what we like, and let you tell us what you like. The first step on the way is the Android app we’re building, which will go live a week Friday on the Archos A5. From there, we’ll be adding features and availability every week or so until Mewbox is doing what it should.

The unique thing Mewbox is doing is giving you the chance to own all our music forever in an open format at good quality, pointing you to good stuff you might miss, and giving something back to the people who make the music so they can afford to make more music. We hope you like the idea. Simple as it sounds, nobody else does all that.

To make Mewbox better, we need your help. Buying music is part of a process. Ideas are formed, tunes played, songs written, performed, recorded, and hopefully enjoyed. If you enjoy music, then buy it. It’s the last part of the cycle. Without sales, musicians have to give up music. Musicians have to eat too. Or drink, at least. And without you they can’t.

So we’re doing this to bring you the music you already know and love. And to help people make you more music you will love. To do that, we need to make you love what we’re doing. And that means we need your help. If there’s anything you want Mewbox to do, let us know. Tell us what you want and we’ll do what we can.

Coming next, something on the ‘how’…