Kesha may have taken the dollar sign from her name, but now the singer is thinking about money again, not for herself, but to fund her new startup, Smash seed round.
According to a Kesha’s Instagram post, Smash will become “a community-based platform for connecting and protecting music creators,” in line with the mission of the new record label of the same name, which was announced last year.
The 38-year-old chart topper was more than a sparkly party girl singing about brushing her teeth with Jack Daniels. Beneath her infectious 2010s pop music is a dark story in which she felt stripped of her powers as both an artist and a person by the predatory record deal she signed as a teenager.
After a traumatic public legal battle with her producer, Kesha says that now she is a “free woman” and that she is making new music. Both her labels, Kesha Records and App Smash, are looking to help others make music without undermining their creative rights.
“I want a place where all kinds of artists and music makers can have a community. “There’s no contact gatekeeping.”
She described the app as “Music Creator LinkedIn” or “Fiverr Style Market.” The difference is that Smash plans to prioritize artist rights at every stage.
Kesha’s CTO on the project is Alan Canisterro. He built some of his first iOS apps at Apple and spent 12 years working for Facebook, where he built the annual review feature. He left in 2016 to launch a social video platform called Rheo, which TechCrunch covered.