To most bands, it sounds like a dream come true: $50,000 with no strings attached; the opportunity to record an album with one of the world's top engineers; and the freedom to make any kind of record you want, unhindered by interfering labels just waiting to drop you at the first sniff of commercial failure. Too good to be true?

Apparently not, if German/Dutch music Web site Sellaband has anything to say about it. Acting in part as a networking site that allows bands to build and connect with their fanbase, Sellaband takes it a step further by allowing fans, or "believers," as the Web site terms them, to show their devotion by investing in their favorite musicians, $10 at a time. When pledges for a band reach the 5,000 mark, the musicians are given the money and go into a studio to make an album. Each believer gets a copy of the finished disc and also retains a stake in its sales.

It's not an entirely new idea, with the Internet having hosted similar schemes before. In 2001, British prog-rock band Marillion financed the album "Anoraknophobia" through preorders; Canadian publishing company Zeros 2 Heroes Media works on a similar principle, sourcing ideas from within an online social-networking environment; more recently, the Web-based venture company MyFootballClub bought the team Ebbsfleet United by taking donations from thousands of small investors throughout the world. The concept has even spawned its own neologism, "crowdsourcing."