People often discover new music from their friends. I tell people about new bands all the time, so I want to publish my iTunes library to the web and let my friends buy songs from me, rather than from Apple. And I don’t want any of the money… I want it all to go to the artist.

I imagine there is a creative legal way to do this. There is definitely a technical way…

– install a light weight agent that monitors my itunes folder and pushes the following data to the server: list of songs, playlists and meta data like number of Plays and Last Played.

– I’d be given a friendly URL like “http://mymusic.com/billboebel” and people can “Friend” me, just like on Facebook.

– my page would let people sort by “recently added”, “most played”, “recently played”, etc.

– people can buy any of the songs I own and the website would securely handle their payment and then would act as a middle man to let the buyer download the song directly from my computer (or queue it for download later if I’m currently offline). If the song’s file is DRM protected, a non-DRM version of the file would be created by the agent on my computer using my credentials that are stored in itunes.

– the website would need to take a cut of the proceeds to handle operating cost, but the rest of the money would go to the artist.

– the website could even let artists set their own price for songs.

– the sound quality would vary from seller to seller, but since the sale takes place between friends, I’m sure the friends can work it out if the buyer is unhappy with the quality.