Unite the world in song! Starting a very small record label...

When we started thinking about what our company would be, it became clear that music was something that was at the very core of our minds for a long time.

Prior to this, Matt (along with our friend, Mark Cousens) had formed the <a href="/projects/horsley/">Horsley Sound Recording Company</a> (named for Captain Horsley, a character from Matt and another friend, Mark Stephenson's Chancer pilot) and later, Rob and Matt would collaborate to create the <a href="/projects/free-culture-foundation">Free Culture Foundation</a>, after a discussion on the merits of recording a large body of freely licensed works for other musicians to build upon.

Shortly before we started, Liam and Matt had been talking about building a set of tools for musicians to operate their own label. These ideas merged into Matt's idea for a free software alternative to Last.fm, which became <a href="/projects/librefm/">Libre.fm</a> in April 2009, and later we turned what we'd learnt into <a href="http://foocorp.net/services/">something for all musicians</a> to use.