Why would you want to part with your cash to unseat the RIAA? If you did, why would you want to throw that cash in my direction? Valid questions and I'm hoping these are questions that are holding back the watershed, so here's my best shot to answer both of them.

I have had some progress in The Plan with some emails back and forth between two potential angels who are curious to know how this might work at larger scales of investment, and before I get to that, I want to outline just why I think it is important to get some buy-in from you.

For those who came late, a recap:

• the first post: How to Slay the RIAA

• The subscriber mechanism is a muse for making the root portal technology pay for itself

• Dancing with the Angels explains why investors should be interested in creating this new industry. Then next line in that old bluegrass song is "While the lions roar"

• The One-Track Mind outlines the new single "release early release often" plan for disposable recorded music, constantly refreshed, flooding the net with sounds.

Still with me? Good. Now on to new business ...

Why You

The short answer to the first question is because you are the customer and in my view of any service business, the customer should be buying what they wanted. I'm not asking for the moon, I'm asking for one day's lunch money. For less than the cost of just one of those overpriced CDs, voting with your dollars tells me there's a will out there for something better than what we get on FM-radio and filling the pages of all the trades. Your angel investment keeps me in the game and tells me there will be people out there who would listen to new artists if only they could find them.

I had a chat with a neighbour about this plan. He said he doesn't buy much music anymore, except perhaps the odd CD by old familiar artists from his young adult and teen days, just to see what they are up to, and mostly because he's not been impressed with what he's hearing from the new artists and repetoire. This is a sentiment I hear all over: They don't make music like the old days anymore.

As a musician, and as a musician in country/folk circles, I know he's wrong. Last night's Chesley Grand Ole Opry was proof of that as many of the old-time country performers had their tapes and CDs on the ticket table and, having heard them, copies were sold. A niche audience, a buying audience that filled the Chesley HS Auditorium sold out a week in advance for the 17th time, but an audience that loves this kind of music and hungers for more. I could repeat that story in any genre you choose.

By being a part of this, by blogging it, by hitting my tip jar, we are composing a message. We are issuing a statement of our disappointment with the mainstream A&R officers, telling the radio stations and record stores that there is more to life than Madonna. We are expressing a faith that all these artists need is a medium where they can be heard.

For less than the price of one more RIAA CD by the old familiar, you are building a new world where music will flow freely. For the cost of one CD by 'approved' artists you are personally responsible for ensuring a lifelong supply of new and fresh music, downloadable, accessible, music for the people and by the people, an inexhaustible well of new music, forever.

Why Me

If you haven't looked at my resume or followed my career you may not know that I've been in the mix of many of the core vox populi movements of this Internet since it began. I was there at the founding of the Ottawa-Carleton Freenet, the longest-running free-access port in North America. I was there at the opening of Sympatico, the first ISP in Canada to offer extreme hand-holding bent on getting everyone affordable and reliable access to the world of online content. I was there at the Ontario Science Centre when they opened the first free public-access Internet cafe in Ontario, and I was there giving the national voices to every regional affiliate in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, leveraging the centralized control of the national news desk to ensure local news was brought to the national audience. I was also there when ISOC took on the USA for cutting all access to Nigeria on rumours their ISP was terrorist.

I am hell-bent on universal open access.

Feedster, Technorati or Google will also tell you that I've got a clear view of this blog thing, about the hidden spaces between the blogs and I know how to leverage that power to create a buzz in just about any topic you might want to choose. I've lived on this wire for nearly a quarter of a century and I know how it works under the hood, and I know how it works in the wetware.

I also bull-headedly refuse to play the proprietary lock-in games that have blinded the rest of this Internet industry. I don't do dot-net, I don't play browser-wargames, I don't endorse eternal fees for patching old bugs, I don't betray subscribers out to advertisers or stalkers. Fool that I am, I still believe this Internet is all about communications, about empowering everyone to be just as much the source as the recipient of bits. I have drawn fire on international development lists for refusing to endorse net censorship or broadcast models of access, I have taken governments to task for vendor-locked services and won, and when I can't do all that, I start looking for other work.

And I'm starving because of that. Literally. I've got a voicemail box full of angry creditors. Headhunters, among those who read it, laugh at my resume. These days, no one wants someone who doesn't play the game. There's no room in the us vs them world of delivering eyeballs to advertisers for someone who wants to let everyone speak and be heard, who would rather watch a passion-fuelled flamefest than bide by stifled stiff-shirt acceptable double-speak.

I'm also a musician, but a musician in a genre where fame and fortune are almost a-priori unthinkables, and it doesn't matter squat to me because the song is the thing. I still go to the open mic nights when I'm in the city, May and I record young songwriters, run workshops, at festivals I hang with the new performers at the open stage and I drag as many of my colleagues as I can to eschew the lure of the footlights and just show up at the campfire because that's where the communications happens, that's where the culture of this music is, that's the true heart of the why of all of it.

Why me? I'm this intersection, the nexus between the world of the digital service provisions and the netherrealms of the cultural voices.

But I can't do it alone. I need partners. I need your support and endorsements, and before I'm blasted out of the water for my stubborn hippie ethics, before I start answering those voicemails in the morning, to make this new world into a reality, I need contributors.

I need you.