• The last 18 months have been challenging for the musicto core team - internal priorities for team members changed leaving little time for ideation and execution.

• The lack of a revenue model made the payment of non-core team members untenable which in turn reduced the ability of the organization to move forward.

• Although culture was strong leading to volunteers actively managing community on-boarding & social media - there has been little resource to move forward

• We came to believe we wouldn’t find a for-profit revenue model that wasn’t exploitative of either the community or the artists we serve. 

• We pivoted to a non-profit model.  In order to make that real we had to identify what - if anything - we could do as a community that would benefit society and indeed, justify our non-profit status.

• Work was done to identify a core belief that we could organize around: “Music can make the world better”  ; this was foundational and applied to both the community and the Foundation. 

• This led to the development of the Fear Project and will no doubt lead to other insights that can be derived from our global reach.

• In retrospect we were trying to blend two separate entities: the .com community and the non-profit organization - while they are similar and share similar beliefs - they are different things.

• The fear project is not really a community project - it is a Foundation project and serves the needs of the non-profit - not the community

• It is not surprising that since we have focused on the Foundation, community applications have stalled.

• We need to revisit what the musicto community is for, what drove its early growth and how we can kickstart growth again.

• People are here for music, not to change the world - they may end up there but that’s not what draws them in: Come for the music, stay for the vibe ;-p

• As curators, people are interested in supporting artists - not supporting a non-profit

• Collaboration is still key to forming a community

• The .com site should lead with music not community or foundation

• The .com site should lead with playlists - the rest is the about page

• What is old is new - let's revisit projects and behaviors from the past that may still have value

• We need to revisit the about and signup pages for the .com and bring the focus back on artists and track subs

• Listening parties

• Regular email of new exciting tracks and artists - curated by community

• What else?

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Foucault%27s_Pendulum_at_Compton_Science_Center.jpg