Indaba Music

Indaba Music is a web-based company that provides a music collaboration environment for musicians: "a place to build a profile, promote their tunes and collaborate with other musicians" as well as enter opportunities like remixing and songwriting contests with popular artists.

The company's website is both a social network and suite of collaboration technologies for musicians. The site makes it possible for musicians in different places to find each other and make music online. Indaba also launches remix contests with prominent artists including Weezer, Peter Gabriel, Snoop Dogg, and Linkin Park.

During the summer of 2010, Indaba launched the second version of their session console, named Mantis, which allows musicians to collaboratively record, edit, and mix tracks online. The relaunch coincided with a new library of Creative Commons-licensed audio loops and sounds that Indaba solicited from its community.

Membership on Indaba Music is free.

Indaba was founded in 2005. Indaba's primary website, www.indabamusic.com, was launched in February 2007. Indaba is a Zulu word for community and collaboration and was chosen because the platform is designed as a way to meet new people and share ideas to create music. The founders came up with the idea for Indaba after starting a non-profit label while they were in college as a means to provide new opportunities for student artists and give them greater exposure. The key to Indaba Music's popularity and success is said to be based on two ideas: that the internet has helped connect artists in a more intimate way, and that the spread of cheaper, higher-quality digital music production software and hardware has enabled virtually anyone to create quality music productions. In February 2015, Indaba Music launched the Converse Rubber Tracks Sample Library in partnership with Converse. The library offers over 42,000 royalty free audio samples recorded at Converse Rubber Tracks studios. Indaba built the technology and produced the recording sessions and sample packs for the library. Many established artists have used sample in their songs including Mura Masa, who used vocals by emerging artist Lewis Lane for the hook of his mega hit song Lovesick. Other artists who have used Rubber Tracks Sample Library samples in songs include: Frank Dukes, RJD2, Com Truise, Machinedrum, Midland, Tom Trago, and Body Language.

In February 2018 Indaba was acquired by Splice.

Indaba users have profiles that describe their background, tastes, and interests (meet people, collaborate online, get hired, gig/jam offline, etc.). Featured sessions and a search function allow users to find each other. Messaging and comment boards are available for communication.

Any musician can start a session and invite members of the Indaba community to join. A session provides musicians with a space and platform to collaborate with others. Members of a session can upload and download tracks, as well as do basic editing and mixing with the Indaba online console. Communication is possible through messages, a discussion board dialogue, a live chat feature and a conference call hosted by Indaba. Sessions can be public (open to anyone in the community) or private (only open to those invited).