Million Dollar Music Box (MDMB) is the world’s first digital canvas for music promotion.

If you could help someone earn a life-changing amount of money for their chronically ill mother just by liking and sharing a Facebook page, would you?

24-year-old Jimmi Sandham has come up with an idea that makes this perfectly possible. He is desperate to help his mum, who lives in Bude, and who has severely suffered from Myalgic Encephalopathy (ME) for many years.

Instead of asking for donations, he wanted to do something different, something that would earn enough money to give his mum every chance of good health. While he was completing his final undergraduate year at Cardiff University, as well as caring for his mum when he could, he came up with the million-dollar idea. Inspired by Alex Tew’s Million Dollar Homepage, he asked himself questions like: How can I set off on the same foot without copying? What is the one thing everybody loves? What tools could I capitalise on that Alex couldn’t? With an enormous passion for music, the way forward was clear. “Music is the answer”. Jimmi would capitalise on social and digital media to make the project a success.

The idea is that musicians from all walks of life, music festivals, record labels and promoters are invited to feature images linking to their music on the world’s first digital canvas for music promotion, seen here. The canvas will feature thousands of links to music from around the world. Music lovers can then find new music simply by clicking on the images and going with the flow.

In theory, this was a nice idea, but Jimmi would still face a challenge to get promoters to recognise the value in featuring on the canvas. If no one was looking at the canvas, then the space would be worthless. Here’s where the community comes in. To help Jimmi and his mum, all you have to do is like and share the MDMB social media pages (Facebook, Twitter / @millionmusicbox), and other things about MDMB, such as this article.

Music featured on the website will also be shared on the MDMB social media pages. When MDMB has a huge following of music lovers, this becomes an attractive deal for promoters. Additionally, shareable content benefits news media and bloggers, so the more you’re sharing the story, the more they’ll publish it all over the internet, and this means more people will be looking at MDMB, so promoters will want to feature on it. It’s that simple, and it really could work. Jimmi is confident that all the project needs to be successful is for the MDMB pages to be liked and shared by everyone that reads this. This would trigger a viral effect that could be powerful enough for Jimmi to help his mum within three to six months, which is a very exciting prospect.

While it is not revolutionary in terms of how music will be listened to, MDMB is intended to be a fun and quirky phenomenon in the music industry. As we haven’t come across anything like it before, we think it will do quite nicely.

The pricing model means that when all the space on the canvas is sold, MDMB would have generated a truly life-changing one million dollars of revenue, about £650,000. You can find out more about promotion and pricing here. In short, promoters can get involved for as little as the price of a big night out, $100, roughly £65. Everything is priced in US Dollars because it is likely the most internationally recognised currency, and Jimmi wants to attract music from around the globe.

“I don’t actually expect to earn a million dollars, but it is an amount that will get people talking, and it’s not impossible. If people talk about this, it will be a success,” says Jimmi Sandham

Every penny of MDMB profits will be used to help Jimmi’s mother. There is also hope that the project will raise awareness about ME and encourage further research into the condition, which has no definitive cure. ME is an incredibly challenging disease. Every day is a struggle with debilitating physical and cognitive suffering. Symptoms vary in person to person and from day to day, which means it is difficult to manage. Those with severe cases are forced to spend most of their time bedbound because any mental or physical exertion will make their condition worse. Symptoms include marked fatigue and weakness, sickness, cognitive dysfunction, headaches, pain, sleep and digestive dysfunction, cardiovascular abnormalities, memory loss, and many other problems. This makes it hard for patients to integrate into everyday society. Unable to work, socialise or even take up a hobby without jeopardising their health, ME sufferers usually have a very low quality of life. Even simple things such as cooking or paperwork become detrimental to their health because exertion will set them back considerably. This is all made even more difficult by the fact that on the outside an ME sufferer can look fairly healthy, but just like cancer and other serious diseases, ME must be met with the utmost of concern.

The aim is to use the profits to employ an experienced ME carer for her, to ensure she can afford regular appointments with specialist doctors, to enable her to better follow the healthy diet advised by health professionals, and to also give her the chance to undergo other costly treatments she cannot currently consider.

So, if you want to be a part of the success of this exciting project, be sure to like and share this article and the MDMB Facebook and Twitter pages. When it comes to MDMB, sharing is caring.