Charitable Giving from Music Downloads

Partnering with some of the UK's leading charities, a new online social enterprise - fairsharemusic- combines legal music downloads with charitable giving. 

The UK's fairsharemusic was created as a commercially run social enterprise with the aim of donating 50% of its net profits to its partner charities.

fairsharemusic is the brainchild of Lee Cannon and Jonny Woolf, who first hooked up in the 1990s, working for the same record company. Over the years, their experience of working on high-profile charity projects such as Live Aid, Amnesty’s Secret Policemans Ball and the Children’s Party at the Palace showed them that great things could be achieved by harnessing the power of music to help others. 

Fast forward to the late Noughties, and after a successful joint venture at Warner Music, Lee and Jonny came up with a plan to combine the world of digital downloading with online fundraising. 

So this month they launched fairsharemusic, partnering with many of the UK's leading charities.

Cannon and Woolf says their feel-good downloads make the donating part of the simple, everyday things people do. 

They say by embedding generosity into the enjoyment of music, fairsharemusic is helping to change the way people think about giving. The commercially-run social enterprise provides its charity partners with a powerful new music-based fundraising platform.

Just like other music download sites, it offers over 8.5 million tracks including new releases costing from just 79p.

The founders says the crucial difference is that for every track downloaded from fairsharemusic, they donate half the profit to the chosen charity. And on top of that, the more they download, the more they donate.