Recently I was listening to a podcast about startups called This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis. I enjoy learning about how business works and the process of developing and executing ideas. During an episode, Jason had what I thought was a GREAT idea about how to revolutionize independent cinema. Check out this short video:

Could this idea work for indie music artists as well?

What if a company such as MySpace (who is in desperate need of some help) took 10 million dollars and invested it into 100 unsigned independent artists. Each band would get $100,000 dollars to record an album and schedule a tour. The albums would be exclusively heard on MySpace and available for free. The artists would own everything about the music (masters, publishing, etc…).

Each artist would be REQUIRED to blog the entire process and document how every cent was spent (A great idea would be to give each band a credit card with a $100K limit and set them up on Blippy). This would give a unique transparent view and make each band accountable for the money.

There is another aspect of this I was thinking of. What if you got the top 75 – 100 music clubs in the country and gave each of them $100K a year to book one or two of the 100 artists in this program for a free showcase each week.

Imagine the exposure for an artist. They could play a great club full of potential fans every night. Since the shows would be free, it would be easy for fans to take a chance on a new act and maybe buy a CD or download or even PAY for a ticket next time they come through town. The venues would also be responsible to report the usage of the money just like the bands were.

So overall you are looking at 17 – 20 million dollars to create 100 new albums, help produce up to 10,000 live music events a year and expose new music to countless fans. Say you did this for 5 years and spent 100 million dollars. This would change the music business and give a boost to indie artists that has never been seen before.

Of course MySpace isn’t the only company that could do this. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and many other companies have this kind of cash just laying around.

The idea here to give struggling artists the chance to be great.

Get people used to the idea of seeing live music.

Make the venues open their doors to artists who might not of had a chance to play there.

It would truly bring music to the masses.