(PRWEB) - Talk about ahead of their time, or, in Internet-speak, “bleeding edge”: efolkMusic was selling downloads for a buck starting back in 1999, just about four years ahead of Steve Jobs and Itunes.

Founded by North Carolina musician Chris Frank of the Tony award-winning Red Clay Ramblers, the concept grew out of a desire to help musicians stay in what he calls "high touch" with their fans. “The initial idea was to create a resource that could present information about exceptional artists and distribute their music in both spinning (CD) and non-spinning (AAC and MP3) formats” Frank says, “but we soon realized that users wanted more- information about festivals, radio shows, performances, a place to discuss the music and artists- in short, the 'community' features. Becoming a nonprofit allows us to place more emphasis on these non-revenue producing areas.”

efolkMusic existed as a commercial website for 4 years before converting to a nonprofit organization and receiving 501(c)(3) status in 2004. “Just like every dance and theatre organization already knows, non-commercial art needs public support. Folk music has never been profitable (except maybe for a brief period in the late 60's-early 70's), and most certainly is not in today's McMedia world.” Frank explains.

Support is starting to come from around the country: Web-Services of Willard, MO is providing programming, RJS Networks of FL provides web hosting, and the efolkMusic office now located in downtown Carrboro, NC is being subsidized by the Public Gallery of Carrboro. “We have the working structure in place to provide artists with a great service, thanks to these contributions- now we are ‘going public’ in the nonprofit sense, appealing to music fans to help us capitalize the continued development.”

EfolkMusic has an average of 2500 visitors a day and is much more than a distribution outlet for CDs and downloads. Fans can listen to streaming previews of music available on the site, download promotional tracks, participate in the discussion forum, read the online “Folkzine” and get information about folk festivals, folk radio shows and live performances. Artist services include full e-commerce capability for CDs and downloads, concert listings and promo CD distribution to folk radio stations.