At Afrinnovator, we LOVE great applications of technology. AfricaUnsigned.com (twitter: @AfricaUnsigned) is just one of those ones that really takes the World Wide Web and turns it to some pretty good use, in the process helping out many young, talented people.

The premise behind AfricaUnsigned is basically to connect potential musical talent from the African market, primarily unsigned artists, with individuals who love their music and would like to support them go to the next level. It’s a crowdsourced model much like Kiva.org. The aim is to help the artists raise $10,000 which they use to record 3 professional tracks and maybe even a low budget video.

As a potential supporter, you go on the site and sign up (you will soon also be able to log in using Facebook Connect), and browse through artist bios, listen to some of their sample tracks. If you like their music, you can donate some money towards them meeting their $10,000 goal and hopefully getting that much closer to achieving their dreams. In return for your support, you would get digital copies of the artist’s music once recorded and a share of net revenues from online sales of the music! Read more about how it works…

AfricaUnsigned.com is definitely a really well designed too! As per their Facebook page…

Africa Unsigned is an online movement that will take African music to a whole new level by linking fans directly to musicians and leveraging those relationships for the creation of new, well recorded, African music. We do so by empowering unsigned African artists to record music funded by fans.

Music fans from all over the world can browse through artists on AfricaUnsigned.com. When they find an artist they like, they can invest in the artist’s music with increments of $1,-. When $10,000 is reached the budget is used to make a professional recording of three songs. The music is then distributed to the fans who backed the artist and sold on all major online stores (incl. Amazon & iTunes). All the generated net income from music sales is shared equally between the artists and the music fans who backed the recordings.

A big thumbs up to AfricaUnsigned from us at Afrinnovator!