Founded in 2009, merge.fm is a collaboration application that helps artists or bands in the process of creating music by allowing them to share it with their fans and taking feedbacks from them. "The point of merge.fm is to let you share this experience with your biggest fans, and allow them to engage with you and your music in a new way" explains the site.

It is co-founded by three students from University of Illinois, who wanted local bands to share their song writing experience with those who appreciate it. Adam Steele, a musician himself and a graduate in aerospace engineering has been a part of musical bands in the past, and has always wanted to share his song writing experience.

He teamed up with his classmate Will Leinweber, a graduate in bioengineering and friend August Knecht, a computer engineer to provide a solution called merge.fm.

"The goal of Merge.fm is to make scalable way to not only share the creative process but also enable bands to be compensated for sharing their unique creative experience" shares Steele.

Fans need to subscribe with the page of their favorite artist or band for $4.99 per month, and Merge.fm shares the revenue with the artist by dividing each subscription into half. Although they are planning on letting the bands choose their own subscription price.

When an artist is in the process of making music, he/she can upload each version of their music as they make them. "This means that more than one person can edit a project on the site, similar to Wikipedia" defines Steele.