PurpleJamm wants to change lives, one note at a time

Making money while making the world a better place – what could be more ideal than that? That’s the goal of PurpleJamm, a startup that’s mostly Filipino-owned.

PurpleJamm is a no-frills website where independent artists go to sell their songs and albums. Its mission is simple: at least 50 percent of the proceeds from the sale of every song should go to humanitarian works of credible and reputable non-profit organizations. The rest is split between management and operations, and the artists.

The company is the brainchild of several investors and musicians, including Mark Trotter and Filipinos Rommel Roque, Jane Soco, and Jayjay Viray. It is based in the US, but it outsources tech support to Asia, including the Philippines.

In an interview with Tech in Asia, Roque shares how the idea for the startup came about. It was in 2007 and they were thinking of a way to help an orphanage finance Christmas parties for street kids. With not much money to give at the time, they decided to compile songs they’ve composed through the years into a CD and sell it to raise funds. That’s when a lightbulb went off their minds.

From an idea to a movement

From an idea, PurpleJamm evolved into an organized and institutionalized way of using music to help people.

Roque explains, “Purplejamm was conceptualized as a business model that bridges the gap between countries where humanitarian works are needed and countries with strong economies.” In other words, the platform primarily caters to poor nations in terms of donations, but markets its content to major economies like the US, Europe, and Canada.

The team has an enormous vision. “Hopefully in time, some unknown artist from a poor village in Africa will be able to use his musical composition to help hungry kids around him. His countrymen who have successfully migrated to rich economies will be able to hear his notes along with the cries of these children. And just maybe, these seemingly random acts will be bring about change or at least the awareness that something can be done to make our world better,” says Roque.

Purplejamm is working on an initial set of about 300 songs, now in various stages of completion. Like other music downloading sites, its songs are organized in terms of genre. However, there are featured songs that focus on particular causes such as, for instance, the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and the killing of 44 elite police officers in a botched operation to capture an al-Qaeda-linked bombmaker in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Roque says such songs highlight the significance of PurpleJamm in communities: “it is a venue where important events can be immortalized through songs so that future generations can remember the lessons learned.”

PurpleJamm targets to generate as many as 1,000 songs this year from one country alone. Roque says they are in talks with artists and independent publishing groups interested to partner with them in several countries.

The company hasn’t started promotional activities yet, but it partnered with ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation, the umbrella non-profit organization owned by the Philippines’ biggest media conglomerate ABS-CBN, which will give them a big push on traditional media.