Everything you should
know before you join.

Collective Loft is a professional network built for the creative class: artists, musicians, writers, poets, designers, filmmakers, photographers, performers, and creative technologists. It’s where creatives who don’t already know each other find collaborators, agree on real terms before any work begins, and open a shared workspace built around the project. It’s not a job board and not a portfolio site. It’s the place creative collaboration actually happens, end to end.

Independent creative professionals across eight disciplines: visual art, music, writing, design and web, film, photography, performance, and creative tech. If you make work and you need the right collaborator to make it real, a composer for your film, a designer for your record, a photographer for your collection, this is built for you.

Those platforms treat creatives as something they’re not. LinkedIn treats a musician’s profile like a résumé and optimizes for job applications. Upwork creates a client-worker hierarchy and a race to the bottom on price. Behance is a beautiful gallery where work sits waiting to be found, with no path from profile to actual project. Collective Loft is built around the one thing that drives creative output: the relationship between complementary disciplines that produces work neither party could make alone. You find each other, you agree on terms, and you get a shared workspace to do the work.

You post a Collab Brief, a description of what you’re making and who you need, written in creative language, not a job listing. Other members find it filtered by discipline, compensation type, and location. You can also discover and respond to briefs other creatives have posted. When someone’s interested, they send a message explaining why they’re drawn to the project, and you review their profile and portfolio before deciding to move forward.

Collab Terms are the agreement two creatives set before any work begins. They cover the compensation type, creative exchange, paid, or revenue share, along with rights, deliverables, milestones, and timeline. Both parties review, modify, and accept the terms, and they’re timestamped. It’s the structured agreement layer the creative class has never had: clarity in writing, before the work starts, instead of a misunderstanding three DMs deep after it falls apart.

Once both parties accept the Collab Terms, a Loft Studio opens, a shared workspace dedicated to that collaboration. The original brief is pinned at the top, with milestones, files, and persistent messaging all in one place. The collaboration has a home now, instead of being scattered across email, texts, and a shared Notion page held together with hope.

Eight: visual art, music, writing, design and web, film, photography, performance, and creative tech. The whole point is cross-discipline collaboration, a filmmaker finding a composer, a painter finding a musician for an installation, so the network is built to connect across all of them, not silo them.

Joining is free. Membership is $10 per month after a 7-day free trial, and enrolled students pay nothing at all. What the $10 buys is the right to start things: posting a Collab Brief, and reaching out to someone first. Being found, answering, agreeing terms, working in the Loft Studio, getting paid and building a rating are free for every member, always.

Because free platforms attract people who aren’t serious. The $10 a month keeps this a professional environment, a room where everyone has skin in the game, agreements are in writing before work starts, and your creative work is protected from day one. The cost is the filter that keeps the quality high.

Everything. Full access to Discover, Collab Briefs, discipline matching, Collab Terms, and the Loft Studio, with no tiers or locked features. Use it to run ten collaborations a month, or use it to build your profile and get discovered. The platform works on your timeline and your priorities.

Yes. Your first 7 days are free. Your card is not charged until the trial ends, and you can cancel anytime before then at no cost.

Joining is free, and a free member is a real member. You get a profile, you appear in Discover and Discipline Matching, other members can reach you, and when they do you can agree terms, work in the Loft Studio, get paid, and build a rating from finished work. It never expires and never needs a card. Membership at $10 a month buys the right to START things: posting a Collab Brief, and reaching out to someone first. The person starting a project has a budget. The person answering is looking for work, and charging them to be found is the thing this platform was built to argue against.

You keep everything through the end of the month you already paid for, and then you are a free member again. Your profile, portfolio, rating and collaboration history all stay. Any collaboration already running carries on to the end with full access for both of you, and any brief you already posted stays live. You just cannot start a new one until you subscribe again.

Yes. Enrolled students pay nothing. Sign up with your school email address, we send a six-digit code to that address, you enter it, and you get a free year with full access and no card. Re-verify the same way each year for as long as you are a student. This works in countries where school email domains are reserved for accredited institutions, which covers the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, India, South Africa and around thirty others. If your school sits on an ordinary domain, send us a note from the Help page.

You have 14 days from any payment to request a full refund, for any reason. Refunds are issued by Paddle, our merchant of record. Ask them directly at paddle.net, or send us a note from the Help page and we will pass it on.

The founding members are the first cohort on the platform, chosen by hand across disciplines and cities before launch on August 1, 2026. They get 90 days free, full access, a permanent founding member badge on their profile, and a direct hand in shaping the platform as it grows.

No. The founding class was invited by name and the list is closed. Anyone can join Collective Loft now on the normal terms: 7 days free, then $10 a month, or free while you are an enrolled student. The founding badge is the one thing that cannot be bought later, which is rather the point of it.

You become a free member, keeping your profile, your portfolio, your rating and your founding badge, which stays permanently. What ends is the ability to start things: posting briefs and reaching out first. Add a card at $10 a month whenever you want that back.

Protection is built into the structure. Before any work begins, both parties agree to Collab Terms covering rights, deliverables, and compensation, and those terms are timestamped. Nothing starts on a handshake and a hope. The agreement layer exists specifically so creatives aren’t left exposed the way they are on platforms that were never built for them.

Three: creative exchange, paid, or revenue share. You set which one applies in the Collab Terms before work begins, along with the specifics on rights, deliverables, and milestones. Both parties have to accept before anything starts.

No. The platform is a digital network open to creatives anywhere, there are 165 million independent creative professionals worldwide, and the network is built for all of them. Chicago is home base and the site of the first physical Loft Studios and founding-member community, but membership and collaboration are not limited by location.

Morgan Collective Group is the parent company, and Collective Loft is its flagship. The group is building four divisions that reinforce each other: the platform finds the talent, the studios give them a home, the label releases their work, and publishing protects everything they create. Each division makes every other one stronger.

Three more divisions, in sequence. Collective Loft Studios, professional recording infrastructure for independent artists, with priority booking and discounted rates for members. Collective Loft Records, an artist-first independent label starting royalty splits at 50/50, with shorter contracts and more ownership kept by the artist. And Collective Loft Publishing, a full creative publishing house spanning music, literary, and art publishing, including collaborative works unique to the ecosystem.