MUSICat Artist Payments Service: Report on our First Pilot

The Rabble team recently wrapped up the first pilot round of our brand new MUSICat Artist Payments Service (MAPS) with the Chapel Hill Public Library and the incredible musicians in the Tracks Music Library, and we want to share the results with you.

We built MUSICat Artist Payments service because we know that cutting and sending checks to musicians can be nothing short of a logistical nightmare for our library partners—and one that often leaves artists waiting for weeks to receive payment. MUSICat's designed to simplify licensing local music, and with MAPS we wanted to radically simplify and improve reporting on payments processing for librarians while speeding it up for musicians. We're happy to report that we've succeeded on both counts.

They way MUSICat Artist Payments Service works is simple: Libraries send Rabble a single payment to cover the costs of the artist honorariums they plan to send out in the course of a submission round, right before inviting artists to their collection. After an artist signs a license with the library, a librarian chooses when to accept it and release their payment with a single click, and Rabble sends the artist their honorarium check. Along with reporting tools and email notifications to keep librarians and artists looped into the process, you've got a straightforward and speedy way to pay local artists!

Molly, the Special Project Coordinator at CHPL who manages the library's MUSICat collection, confirms that the service is also good for musicians: 

"At CHPL, our organizational culture is centered on user experiences. We seek to design solutions to meet our users’ needs, not our own. This service allows artists to focus on their artist and album pages [for the collection]. Payment is seamlessly connected to successfully uploading their work, rather than successfully filling out and mailing a whole lot of paperwork (in duplicate) to our local government."

The Chapel Hill musicians in Tracks Music Library concur. Sadie Zimet of Sadie Rock and the Mad Ryans reported that, "We were very impressed with how quickly we received payment. It was really much faster than we expected." Kennan Jenkins, aka XOXOK, called the service "Easy and seamless!" 

As our library partners know, the Rabble team prides ourselves on awesome support. Cassidy Goff, who performs as Alo Ver, shared this support story: 

"When I first got a notification of the check mailed to me, I was worried I would be out of town when it arrived. I emailed MUSICat and got a response very quickly, assuring me that they could send another check if I did not get the first. I really appreciated how quickly I heard back and how willing they were to work around my situation."

Molly also notes that MUSICat service saves library staff a ton of time: 

"If we were to pay the artists ourselves, each act would need to fill out all of the vendor and contract paperwork in duplicate. The routing alone would use up a tremendous amount of staff time." 

We're currently running our second round of the MUSICat Artist Payments service with Austin Public Library for the Electric Lady Bird collection, and we'll be kicking off the service with Hennepin County Library's MNSpin in the coming weeks. 

If concern about managing the artist payment process has held your library back from building a local music collection, it needn't any longer. And if your library already uses MUSICat, but wrestles with unwieldy payments, you can start using the MUSICat Artist Payments service for your next round of artist invitations.

At Rabble, we're so pleased that this service is making life easier for librarians and getting checks to artists faster than ever. It's also extremely gratifying to send money to hard-working musicians. We'd love to send some cash to artists in your community - get in touch if that sounds fun to you too :)

Chapel Hill Public Library Launches MUSICat Collection Tracks Music Library

The Rabble team is delighted to announce the latest MUSICat collection launch!: Tracks Music Library. This new collection is a project of Chapel Hill Public Library and Community Arts & Culture.

The collection launches with over 70 albums by artists that represent North Carolina's Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill Triangle Area music community. “These hyper-local music collections allow libraries to claim their place in the local music ecosystem, supporting both music lovers and bands in the discovery of new content,” says Tracks Coordinator and Library Special Projects Manager Molly Luby.

Librarians in Chapel Hill especially amplified the voices of Black artists for the Tracks launch with a playlist featuring Black and Brown Artists.

Tracks Music Library artist Rowdy captures the essence of the collection: “We’re not New York, we’re not LA, man we’re North Carolina, and we’re southern to the core, and we sound like us.”

Supporting Black Lives Matter

On June 1, Rabble's three working founders agreed to donate our scheduled June raises to bail funds and Black led organizations across the US. Rabble matched, for a total of $2,100. This amounts to about 1.7% of our entire 2019 revenue. Put another way, we donated the equivalent of a week of our income for the year to efforts that sustain the people in the streets fighting for Black lives.

We're small, so that's not a ton of money. We would love to see other tech companies contribute similar proportions to Black organizers and activists.

We welcome you to join us in supporting the following organizations:

We sent $1,650 to bail funds & Black led orgs in cities across the US where we partner with public libraries to build local music collections:

• Austin: 400+1 Bail Fund

• Chapel Hill: The Anti-Racist Activist Fund

• Fort Worth: Tarrant County Community Bail Fund

• Minneapolis: Black Visions Collective

• Salt Lake City: Utah Against Police Brutality

• Lawrence: Bail Fund

• Portland: Portland General Defense Committee

• Nashville: Nashville Community Bail Fund

• Pittsburgh: Bukit Bail Fund

• Seattle: Northwest Community Bail Fund

• Madison: Free the 350 Bail Fund

We donated an additional $460 to these organizations in our home cities of Pittsburgh and Madison:

• 1Hood, Pittsburgh

• Boom Concepts, Pittsburgh

• Freedom, Inc., Madison

• Urban Triage, Madison

MUSICat Now: Empowering libraries to help musicians during COVID-19

At Rabble, we're piloting a range of projects to support local musicians during the COVID-19 crisis. Today, we're announcing the latest of these initiatives: MUSICat Now. This pop-up version of our MUSICat platform, the same software used by libraries from Seattle to Austin, makes it possible for any public library to rapidly build a digital public space to support local musicians. 

Because a major crisis requires a major response, we're waiving all platform fees for libraries launching new local music collections with MUSICat Now. We're also drastically streamlining the MUSICat onboarding process so that any public library can begin supporting working artists in their community through direct honorarium payments within weeks, even days. What's the catch? Libraries must run open submission rounds and commit to pay artists a minimum of $200 to stream a licensed album in their MUSICat Now Collection. If your community will pay artists now, Rabble will work with you to build and support a digital public space for your music community. 

We're launching MUSICat Now because we know artists need help, now. Even before stay at home orders closed restaurants, schools, and businesses in communities across the world, musicians were among the first to feel the economic impacts of COVID-19, and they remain among those who feel those impacts most acutely. Most working musicians earn the vast majority of their income through live performances, which are now at an indefinite standstill and unlikely to return in their past form any time soon, if ever. The small and midsize venues that form the backbones of local music ecosystems operate on slim margins and face massive obstacles in the time of COVID-19. It's clear many will not survive.

While reasonable people might infer that the capacity to share music via the Internet would be a boon to musicians during a global pandemic that confines people to their homes, the predatory economics of the streaming industry are an especially cruel irony in the era of COVID. The paltry fees paid to artists by corporate streaming services like Spotify are well-known and far from sufficient to sustain all but the most mainstream global acts.

Artists need meaningful local support for their work more than ever. At Rabble, we've spent the last 5 years working with public libraries to reimagine music streaming through the lens of digital public spaces. With libraries across North America, we've built over a dozen digital public spaces for local music. In these spaces, libraries and artists agree to straightforward licensing terms friendly to both parties, with most libraries paying artists a one-time honorarium up front, usually around $200, to include their work in a collection. 

Obviously a $200 honorarium isn't career sustaining—so we desperately need to grow and expand the benefits digital public spaces offer creative communities, and do it now. Our library partners are collaborating with musicians to imagine and build new ways to sustain creative communities under the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic. In turn, the Rabble team is working with our library partners on efforts to expand and accelerate publishing and payment cycles, reduce payment paperwork for libraries and artists, create and archive virtual concert series, and build mutual aid tools that empower community members to directly support musicians. But we need support for and major investment in digital public spaces from governments at the municipal, state, and national levels to confront the enormity of the challenge creative communities face. 

With physical public spaces closed and likely to reopen with limited accessibility, we need places to work, play, and connect online that don't give communities' wealth and control to corporations and their stakeholders. We need truly public digital spaces where communities can come together, creative workers can earn a living, and we can weather the COVID storm and future crises in solidarity with one another. 

MUSICat Now is our offering toward a future that's built on public good, not corporate greed. We hope your library will join us.

Digital Public Spaces in the Time of COVID-19

Banner image: Mike Lroy Mural at Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse, Madison, Wisconsin. Image courtesy of the artist.

Like many of you, the Rabble team has been reeling. We've been scared, we've been stressed, we've been distracted and disturbed by *waves hands at everything*. Turns out global pandemics are a lot to take in. 

But, we've also been heartened to see so many people respond to this crisis by stepping up to help. We've seen makers and small businesses spearhead mask making initiatives, community members coordinate support for healthcare workers, and mutual aid organizers rapidly expand their networks. And we've seen public libraries and librarians—the organizations and people we work with—step up to share information, advocate for their colleagues, provide internet access however they can, and transform themselves to serve their most vulnerable community members. 

The Rabble team has been looking for ways to help too. Our MUSICat platform is already uniquely designed to leverage public library resources to support and sustain working artists, a population acutely impacted by COVID-19. We immediately started conversations with our library partners to determine how we can empower their institutions to support working artists. Those conversations are ongoing, and we'll be sharing more about our plans to use MUSICat as a lever to help musicians through this crisis in the coming weeks. Before we do, we wanted to take a moment to document Rabble's rapid responses during the first several weeks of this crisis. 

Just a few days after most of the country shut down in mid-March, Kelly Hiser rejoined our team on an active full-time basis. As we announced last November, Kelly handed CEO duties over to Preston Austin at the start of 2020, and was getting more involved in the Pittsburgh tech and nonprofit ecosystems while seeking new career adventures. She's put that search on hold to help Rabble, our library partners, and their communities of artists weather the current crisis. 

As Kelly shifted back into work with Rabble, we put our heads together to start figuring out how MUSICat could best help artists. We decided to quickly build functionality to support customizable special messaging on all MUSICat sites, and deployed the tool to all library MUSICat sites just a couple days later (see it in action at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's STACKS). 

As we were working through ideas about MUSICat, we came across a tweet by Danielle Wenner, a philosophy professor at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, announcing a Virtual Tip Jar she created for service industry workers whose incomes are evaporating during the pandemic. Philip Crawford and Rabble's CEO Preston Austin quickly replicated Danielle’s tip jar model for Madison workers. Just two weeks later over 7,000 Pittsburgh workers had signed up using Danielle's Google form, and cities and towns across the country had built their own tip jars. 

Rabble stepped in as a team along with a few volunteers to create the Tip Your Server (TYS) project to support Virtual Tip Jars by making tipping easier, offering randomly selected people, establishment lists, and adding Venmo and PayPal buttons. Both Pittsburgh's and Madison's Virtual Tip Jars are now running on the TYS code. 

Rabble is now digging into the long term work that lays ahead of us. Along with our library partners and the musicians they serve, we face daunting uncertainties: we don't know when we'll leave quarantine, we don't know when libraries will reopen, we don't know when (or which) venues will start booking and hosting shows again. 

But we do know some things. We know that many librarians are striving to keep their communities informed, connected, and supported in new ways. We know that musicians are still making music, and navigating new ways to share their music. We know that the revenue musicians make from existing digital streaming services is not enough— it's never been enough, and it's certainly not enough now. We know that musicians need help, and that public libraries are uniquely positioned to provide that help. We're ready to help too. So stay tuned, stay safe, stay home. 

Fort Worth Public Library launches Amplify 817 with MUSICat

Amplify 817 is the latest local music collection to join the open source MUSICat platform. Created by Fort Worth Public Library in partnership with Hear Fort Worth and with support from The Fort Worth Public Library Foundation, Amplify 817 “nurtures budding artists by bringing their music to light and making it easily accessible to fans around the corner or around the world.”

Speaking to Fort Worth Magazine, Library Director Manya Shorr shore says, “My hope with Amplify is that people will be exposed to a diverse and wide range of local area musicians. A trusted institution like the public library can expose people to music that they haven’t known that they liked before.”

Amplify 817 launched with a teaser collection featuring Lou CharLe$, Jack Barksdale, Taylor Pace, and Gollay. CharLe$ told the Fort Worth Business Press: “With streaming taking over as the main way people consume music, Amplify 817 is a real game-changer for musicians like myself. I truly appreciate the Fort Worth Public Library for making a concerted effort to promote and cultivate the city's homegrown talent.”

Amplify 817 will open for submissions from the Fort Worth community in summer 2020. Given the already stellar teaser collection, we can’t wait to hear more.

Announcing the new Rabble MUSICat Advisory Board

Over the past two months, we've celebrated the five year anniversary of Rabble and MUSICat and announced that Preston Austin will be taking the reins as Rabble's CEO in 2020. Today, we're sharing one final announcement about Rabble's future for 2019: the creation of our new Rabble MUSICat Advisory Board. 

We've always worked closely with our library partners to develop the MUSICat platform. We're driven by a philosophy of working "with, not for" our partners. The Advisory Board establishes a new way for us to collaborate with leaders from the broader library and music communities on the future of Rabble and MUSICat. The board's mandate is to advise Rabble on strategy and efforts that lead to the long-term sustainability of the MUSICat platform and Rabble, and help us continue to align our goals with library and music communities. 

The Rabble Advisory Board will be comprised of leaders in the library community, Rabble's partners, and creative artists who support their library and Rabble's mission. Four incredible library leaders have already committed to serve on the board: 

• Peter Bromberg, Director of the Salt Lake City Public Library

• Vicky Varga, Manager of Digital Initiatives at Edmonton Public Library

• Toby Greenwalt, Director of Digital Strategy & Technology Integration at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

• Valerie Horton, former Director of Minitex, for Minnesota 

With these library leaders, we're now seeking to add voices from the music community to the board. We're currently accepting applications from musicians who want to help shape a more equitable future for music streaming and licensing, believe in the power of public libraries, and support Rabble's mission and values. If you're interested in joining us, fill out the form here.

We're looking forward to working with the new advisory board and all of our library partners—new and old—in the coming year.

Sustainable MUSICat Stewardship (aka "the work continues")

"I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin." — Neo, The Matrix

At the end of The Matrix, Neo—the One prophesied to free humans from their machine enslavement—makes a call to the machine overlords to announce the beginning of their end. Neo tells the machines that he is going to show people the possibility of a liberated humanity, "a world where anything is possible."

Discover & share this Neo GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

Our aims at Rabble are a bit more humble (and as far as we can tell, we are not living in the Matrix), but we do intend to change the world. We want to inspire people to imagine a world where communities, artists, and public space matter more than corporations, technology, and profit. We want to build a world where digital public spaces, material civic support for artists, and community-driven projects thrive. 

In October, we celebrated Rabble and MUSICat's 5 year anniversary, and the work we've done with our public library partners to build toward a better world. But we haven't used this milestone solely as an opportunity to revel in our success. We're also reckoning with the challenges we face, and making plans for the future so that we can continue our work for another five years, and far beyond that. 

The MUSICat platform is reaching a stable "Version 1" and, as a result, we're able to support music collections and our library partners more efficiently than ever before. This technical and financial stability allows us to move forward with plans to make the Rabble team healthier and stronger. 

We created a reorganization plan that puts us on a path toward long-term sustainability. Early in 2020, Preston will become Rabble's CEO, succeeding Kelly, who has served in this role since Rabble's founding. Kelly will begin acting as the Chair of Rabble's revitalized Board of Directors, on which Glenn and Preston, our two working founders, will also serve. Kelly will also convene a new MUSICat Advisory Board with library partners and artists (more about that in an upcoming announcement), and continue to guide strategy and emerging projects as a consultant for Rabble and its library partners.

The Rabble Board of Directors, Kelly, Glenn, and Preston, at the 2018 Public Library Association conference

This reorganization leaves Rabble with a budget that will allow Preston (MUSICat's architect) and Glenn (MUSICat's technical lead) to focus on Rabble full time, with reasonable infrastructure and salaries. That's a major milestone for us as Rabble's founders, and a necessary component in our sustainability plans. 

All too often we cast startup founders and executives as Neos: saviors who alone can disrupt the status quo and transcend the current constraints of the world. But the truth is, it's not not only exhausting for leaders to take on massive burdens alone, it's also detrimental to organizations when institutional knowledge, reputation, and vision are embodied in a single person. 

Preston and Kelly, Rabble’s incoming and outgoing CEO’s, taking a break from the 2018 American Library Association conference in Chicago

Nobody is Neo. We're not chosen ones, we're not saviors, and we're not doing this work alone. As we reconfigure how Rabble runs, we recognize that building public good is collaborative work. We offer our ongoing commitment to do that work in health and affirming ways as a potential model for crafting values-driven ventures. If we want our work to continue for the next five or ten or twenty years, our well-being and the well-being of our colleagues and partners must be one of those values. We haven't always lived up to that ideal, but we're now moving in the right direction to build the kind of lasting organization that the work deserves.

Rabble and MUSICat turn FIVE

This fall, Rabble and the open source MUSICat platform turn five years old. That's five years of working with public libraries to build community-driven music collections, five years of hard work, and five years of great music. 

When we founded Rabble, we didn't quite know what we were getting ourselves into. We knew we wanted to expand the way libraries could work with their communities, and build top notch software with them to do so. But we weren't fully prepared for the challenges - and rewards - that came with the work. 

Now that we're all grown up (five!) and wise (we hope!), we want to take a minute to reflect on the struggles we've faced and the things we've accomplished together with our library partners. 

The proto MUSICat team that built Yahara Music Library with the Madison Public Library. Photo by Carolyn Fath, Isthmus

From the start, we committed Rabble to a few core values: 

Libraries deserve outstanding software that reflects their values. 

Artists (and everyone else) should be clearly and fairly paid for their work. 

Realizing these values meant working closely with librarians - not just building the software and systems we thought were best for them and their communities. 

We also made a decision not to pursue investor funding. Instead, we dedicated ourselves to growing Rabble and MUSICat organically. This decision allowed us to focus solely on the needs of our library partners, and granted us the time we needed to get it right.

The Rabble team with Raquel Mann, Edmonton Public Library, at PLA 2018

As you might guess, building a business on an open-source platform in the public library market with a revolutionary publishing model—and only the funding we earned directly—is not exactly easy. We've faced all kinds of challenges and setbacks. 

Public librarians often joke about how slowly their field and institutions can be to adopt new models and tools, and we discovered that this is true, not because librarians themselves aren't innovate or eager for change—they are. But bold, complex projects like MUSICat collections take time to get off the ground, and as a new vendor working in an emerging space, we often have to clear multiple bureaucratic hurdles. It's taken every bit of our five years to grow a set of library partners for MUSICat big enough to support the Rabble team's labor. 

We've faced technical challenges too, as we scaled MUSICat at both the micro and macro levels. We simultaneously expanded functionality to enable new efforts and opportunities in individual cities and towns, while continuously reducing the cost, complexity, and limits of MUSICat's software. We knew we had to punch well above our weight to succeed, and do it while adhering to library values. We did both, regularly deploying new tools to support everything from video collections to historical showcases, while becoming ever more nimble at spinning up new MUSICat collections and remaining highly responsive to our library partners.

Marc Brakken, former Rabble Technical Lead, with Riversides, the first vinyl album produced by a public library, a project that grew out of Edmonton Public Library’s MUSICat collection Capital City Records.

We've weathered these storms, though, and accomplished big things. 

We work with some of the leading lights in the library world, including public library systems in Edmonton, Seattle, Minneapolis (Hennepin County), Portland (Multnomah County), Austin, Pittsburgh, and Madison (a full list of our partners is here). 

While we're far from perfect, we're proud that we've stayed true to our core values, and we're grateful to our library partners for the guidance they've provided along the way. 

Our most important accomplishment, though, is the support we've helped build for working artists. As of today (October 29, 2019), libraries in a dozen cities have paid hundreds of working artists over a quarter million dollars in licensing fees to share their work in MUSICat collections. That number is going to start growing quickly in 2020 and beyond, as the number of MUSICat collections will increase by forty percent over the next six months. Rabble is also releasing a native iPhone MUSICat Player in 2020. 

Jason Rabb, Salt Lake City Public Library, HUM. Photo by Enrique Limón, Salt Lake City Weekly.

Beyond the exciting new MUSICat collections and mobile experience we're working on, we're also making organizational changes and starting initiatives that make Rabble and MUSICat sustainable as a going concern for years to come. Stay tuned for more news in the coming weeks. 

We believe the future of digital public spaces is bright. We're especially heartened by trends in the library field as leaders call into question and fight back against harmful, extractive digital publishing practices. We believe that community-driven collections will play a critical role in a more just and equitable digital lending ecosystem, and we're ready to do our part. 

We have big ideas about how to work with libraries and communities to shape the future of digital public spaces and creativity online. Together, we've accomplished great things already, and we can do so much more. We hope you'll join us.

DPLAfest "Amplifying Artists" Panel Debrief

Last week, we had the opportunity to talk about our work on public music collections at DPLAfest 2019. Read on for highlights from that conversation with librarians from Seattle and Hennepin County.

Panelists:

• Shannon Crary, Senior Librarian, Collection Management Services, Hennepin County Library

• Andrew Harbison, Assistant Director of Collections and Access, The Seattle Public Library

• Jeff Radford, Community Engagement Librarian, Minneapolis Central

• Kelly Hiser, CEO & Co-founder, Rabble

Kelly started out with a quick history of of public libraries building online local music collections, from the Iowa City Local Music Project to present-day MUSICat collections that are running open submission rounds, licensing music directly from local creatives, and extending their collections to including materials like posters and videos.

We talked about how and why librarians launched the PlayBack and MnSpin local music collections. Andrew noted that before launching PlayBack, they didn't see local culture well reflected in existing Seattle Public Library collections. Shannon and Jeff noted that, like in Seattle, getting the project off the ground was a process that involved getting buy-in over time from staff, administration, and the community.

Kelly asked about who participates on the PlayBack and MnSpin teams. Both libraries draw team members from across their organizations. For PlayBack, that includes folks from the marketing team, a virtual and instructional services librarian, and a community engagement team that does outreach and jury selection. (A special note that a dedicated project manager is a must!) Community members serving in the jurying role are people "typically involved in the music industry in some form," representing radio, labels, youth music programs, and more.

Andrew describes the PlayBack Team - pictured on a slide - to the other three panelists at the Amplifying Artists DPLAfest Panel.

We dug into the technical processes and MUSICat tools that help the submission process run smoothly for everyone involved. Jeff noted that collecting submissions is a "simple process, nicely streamlined" that artists find easy to use. Shannon and Kelly talked about how the Rabble team and librarians work together to make the jurying process configurable so that librarians can adjust elements like ratings and the level of collaboration based on their community's preferences and working styles.

On building representative collections: Andrew said that you must be intentional about getting community jurors who reflect the community; Jeff noted that you have to direct your outreach at all the groups of people you want to connect with. Kelly reflected that both teams are purposefully making the process human by meeting in person and engaging in meaningful conversation about their collections.

In talking about how librarians measure success for non-traditional collections like these, Jeff shared that numbers still matter, but we agreed that success is about much more than usage stats. Librarians also point to engagement in the submissions process, the breadth of communities the collections reflect, and how the collections engage folks who hadn't previously known about or used the library. Stories from participants are also a powerful way to talk about outcomes and impacts.

We talked about a lot more in our hour at DPLAfest, and answered a lot of great questions from the folks who attended. If you'd like to join us for future conversations among librarians running local music collections, or have specific questions subscribe to our news list or reach out directly.

New Local Music Roundup

With four MUSICat collection launches so far in 2019, the Rabble team has been listening to local music pretty much nonstop. We’re proud to be a part of these new projects that amplify the work of artists based in Austin, Pittsburgh, Davenport, Iowa and Appleton, Wisconsin.

Austin Public Library announced the opening collection of Electric Lady Bird in January. It’s no surprise that “The Live Music Capital of the World” put together a treasure trove of local music that aims to “represent everything the Austin music scene has to offer.”

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh launched STACKS, “an ongoing document of the region’s vital, evolving music scene” on February 15, and immediately garnered accolades and excitement from local press and musicians.

Also in February, Davenport Public Library launched QC Beats, “not only to share local music, but also to support local musicians." Their stellar collection goes to show that talented musicians are working in communities of all sizes.

Most recently, Appleton Public Library published its opening FlipSide collection “that highlights Fox Cities artists to help [the] community discover & celebrate local music.” The library celebrated the opening of the collection with a kickoff concert featuring FlipSide artists.

Happy listening!

So long 2018, let's keep it moving...

Greetings, from Rabble at the end of 2018! We're ending the year with a flurry of activity as five libraries are in the process of launching local music collections with MUSICat. This means a lot of new local music is coming our way in 2019, and we can't wait to hear it.

As we look forward to 2019, we're taking a moment to look back on everything we've accomplished over the past year…

So. Many. Site. Launches.

We launched two new collections and two opening submission rounds with some fantastic library partners. Salt Lake City’s HUM published its first batch of albums, along with an incredibly cool collection of gig posters. Multnomah County Library published the largest opening MUSICat collection to date (over 130 albums!) with their Library Music Project.

More recently, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh opened submissions for STACKS, which the library envisions as "an ongoing document of the region’s vital, evolving music scene." Austin Public Library began its first submission round for Electric Lady Bird, which will gives folks an opportunity to "explore the more niche, DIY corners of Austin’s music scene." Both libraries will publish their opening collections early in 2019.

This fall, we also launched MUSICat Chorus, a version of our local music platform for libraries serving smaller populations. Three midwestern libraries are building collections that will launch in 2019: Appleton's FlipSide, Davenport's QC Beats, and Eau Claire's Sawdust City Sounds. We know that talented musicians live and work everywhere, and we're excited to help these libraries build collections with their communities.

We're going to South by Southwest!

We are over the moon that SXSW invited us to speak about our work with public libraries and librarians next year. Raquel Mann (Edmonton Public Library), Dale Kittendorf (Austin Public Library) and Jacquea Mae (Pittsburgh musician and STACKS juror) will join our CEO Kelly Hiser to share with the SXSW crowd how libraries are shaping themselves into sites for innovation in the music industry. Let us know if you'll be there!

We had a blast at conferences and events.

Preston, Raquel Mann of EPL, Glenn, and Kelly at PLA in Philadelphia

We loved seeing many of you at the Public Library Association conference in Philadelphia this past March (and we were sorry to miss some of you because of snow!). Kelly spoke about our journey as a values-driven company at Madison's Social Good Summit. We talked with librarians and soaked up so much wisdom at ALA in New Orleans and the Library Journal Directors' Summit in San Diego.

MUSICat grew.

We built new tools to support librarians as they expand their visions about what their local music collections can be. Highlights include more robust support for poster collections, and new features that allow librarians to build pages that showcase elements of their local music scene, from historic icons to current music venues. We added the ability for visitors to star tracks they so they can assemble a list of their personal favorites.

Sample from the HUM poster collection

We also did a ton of work to make MUSICat more powerful and efficient behind the scenes. We rolled out a set of improvements to MARC record exports, we built an entire new server environment for our sites, and we added a range of new configuration tools that help librarians customize their sites. Finally, we added a new class of less-privileged administrator, the contributor, which can help with maintaining  posters collections or showcases without being allowed to configure the rest of MUSICat.

We're gearing up for so much more in 2019.

Look out for lots of site launch announcements in 2019. We're building more new partnerships than ever, and we can't wait to see where the new year takes us.

On the development side, our big priority in the new year is the launch of our mobile app, which will be available for Android and iOS. We'll also be adding support for video collections, so look out for some great new content in Multnomah's Library Music Project.

We're in the process of building a new open source transcoder, which brings us closer to our goal of making a public distribution of our source code available to any library that wants to use it.

Thank you for your work with us.

As always, we remain incredibly grateful to our library partners, and the many librarians who work with us day in and day out to build a better future for public libraries and their communities. As we continue to meet passionate and talented people working in this space, we grow ever more committed to helping libraries engage creative folks in their communities through digital public spaces. Thank you for continuing to imagine new ways to build public good.

The whole team sends our best wishes to you and yours as we look forward to the new year.

Happy new year, from Kelly, Preston, and Glenn!