SBIR Phase I: A Cloud-Enabled Digital Art Service for User-Generated Music

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will determine the technical and commercial feasibility of a cloud-enabled digital art service that facilitates a free and global exchange of user-generated music. A recent convergence of digital technology has dramatically changed the way music is created, distributed, consumed, and commercialized. An opportunity now exists to facilitate a global, open, and free musical exchange directly between producer and consumer. Cloud computing offers the ability to facilitate this exchange in a highly scalable, capable, and cost efficient manner. Cloud computing also enables a cloud-based music consumption methodology which eliminates the consumer burdens of file management, availability, and backup. Phase I research will determine the technical and commercial feasibility of a service that addresses this opportunity by developing a fully cloud-enabled infrastructure using a Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture and publicly launching the service for the collection and analysis of empirical data. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is the greater technological understanding of the robustness and cost efficiencies of media-driven, cloud computing application deployments, and a potentially extreme disruption of current music markets and music consumption methods. The proposed service will initially be commercialized through an affiliate marketing model fostering commerce throughout the affiliate sphere. If successful, the project would ultimately provide: consumers with free cloud-based music, producers with a free outlet to market brands, affiliates with expanded markets, and society with democratized music.