The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom is pretty amazing, if for no other reason than that it creates stuff. A lot of stuff.

Paintings and plushies, applications and animation, stories and stained-glass windows, comics and conventions, websites and whatnot - you name it, we make it.

All this content needs to go somewhere, of course. But not everyone can put a website together or have the resources available to keep their work online should it ever become popular. That's where SaaS (software-as-a-service) platforms come in - an SaaS provides a service, like blog hosting (think Blogger or WordPress.com), that lets you focus on creating and publishing content without worrying about the technological challenges of doing so or keeping it available during high traffic.

Pony.fm is an SaaS for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan music. The site's purpose is simple - to provide an easy solution for brony composers, arrangers, and otherwise musically talented individuals to get their music online and get it out there.

Bandcamp, YouTube, and SoundCloud are currently the most popular venues I see pony music being released through. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, they're not exactly ideal. For one, they impose limits on free downloads (with the exception of YouTube) - this alone creates a great deal of annoyance for many artists, since most of them release their music for free. YouTube does not impose such limits, but as a video-sharing site, it's hardly even appropriate to begin with - as a matter of fact, it doesn't even offer downloads.

The other key disadvantage is that these large SaaS's interfaces and feature sets are not specifically tailored for our fandom. Building an SaaS for bronies brings with it the unique opportunity to create a truly special resource for sharing and discovering content, like organizing content using taxonomies based on the show. That's something that no general-purpose SaaS can get away with.

As Pony.fm nears the alpha testing stage, I'm excited to begin sharing some concrete updates and information on its progress. I'll use this blog to write about new features, reflect on my experiences as a developer, and keep track of project milestones over time.

Follow it if you want to keep up with news on the pony music hosting site!