Music for Microloans

Shimoda Air Force is a two-person band featuring Brian Weingartner and Josh Kross. Our influences include Wilco, Radiohead, WEEN, Miles Davis, and The Hold Steady. We are pretty much a recording project because Josh lives in New York City and I live in Philadelphia. Josh and I have been friends for decades and SAF was born out of our desire to make music together even though we lived several hours apart.

We share our recording files over the internet, making the recording process pretty flexible for us, and we have been able to give each other a lot of creative freedom to experiment with song writing and arranging, as well as recording techniques. Since we are rarely in the same room together when recording we have learned to trust the judgment of the other person, in a way that is completely different than any bands we’ve either been in before this.

This was really a multi-step decision on our part. After our debut EP “Stay On Target” had been on iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify for a year we were faced with the decision on whether or not we wanted to take a chunk of our profits to re-up with those services. When it came down to, it just seemed like a waste of money, and that there was something better we could be doing with that money. While having our music available on the big sites was cool, it ended up seeming like more of a status symbol to us instead of a sound business decision, especially because we are a small independent band. We also did not like having no control over what to charge for our music. We love making music, we love sharing the music we make, and any money that comes from this process is a bonus to us.

Once we made the decision to move forward with our music only on BandCamp and have the pay what you want model, we next came to what to do with the money we already made, and what we would do with the money we might potentially make. We decided we wanted to help make a difference in the world, and thought about a number of charities we would like to support. We ran into the issue that we would most likely be making a one time donation, and due to the amount of money we would be donating, make a relatively small impact. This led us to consider micro-lending.

Picking the right micro-lending organization was more complex than we anticipated. After considering several bigger names that turned out to lend with extremely high interest rates, we decided on Zidisha.  Zidisha provided us with a great opportunity to make a large impact on someone’s life, with our relatively limited profits, as well as the ability to roll over our loans into new loans as they are paid back. Once we figured this all out we became really excited about the prospect of being able to help multiple people with the same funds.