Are you an artist who likes giving downloads away for free but would like something (besides money) in return from your fans? What if you could exchange a social interaction which helps market your music such as a tweet on Twitter or share on Facebook for the download? This idea of “social currency” is not new, but we’ve made it very easy to do with a new open-source app call SoundCloud-Social-Download.

The app automagically rolls together interactions from four of the biggest social networks (tweet on Twitter, share on Facebook, update on MySpace, & Digg… on Digg) and throws in Email capture for good measure to make the ultimate “social for download” campaign. Once a user completes one of the required interactions, they are served up a secure download straight from your SoundCloud account.

Here’s a short screencast about how the app works:

And here’s some examples of the app in the wild:

• alainjohannes.heroku.com
• playingmyheart.heroku.com
• love-amongst-ruin.heroku.com
• armageddoncomealive.com

The code is available (and completely free to use, change, etc) on the SoundCloud github. From there you’ll also find step-by-step documentation, walking you through setup, configuration, customization, and deployment. Let us know what you think and please drop us a line if you use the app. If you’re having technical issues, please submit your problem here.

Stay tuned for more open-source apps coming soon…

Did someone say Check in for Download?

P.S. If you’re a developer who is comfortable deploying these open-source apps, we’ve got a ton of SoundCloud artists who could use the help and wouldn’t mind paying for it. Let me know @LeeMartin