Commission a short piece

I’m working on an album of pieces around 1 minute in length. I expect it to be done in two or three months. It is possible for you (yes, you!) to commission a piece on the album. My plan is to gather 45 commissions for these pieces. I have 8 remaining.

You as the commissioner get to name the piece. Your role as titler and commissioner will be mentioned in the program notes. If you commission a piece in honor of another person or of an event, the person and/or event will also be mentioned in the program notes. A new piece of music will be created, just for you! Within a week, you will get a copy of the pice emailed to you in the audio format of your choice (MP3, AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, AAC) and have one week in which to come up with a title (I reserve the right to nix titles that I deem offensive).I retain copyright, but the piece will be released under a Creative Commons Share Music License, so the commissioner (and honoree) can share the piece with his or her friends via CD or the internet.

Itts fun and low cost to be a patron of the arts. Commissioned music can mark a special day or honor a friend. What do you get for the guy who has everything? A minute of original music to celebrate his birthday! You can demonstrate your excellent taste and general hipness or surprise a friend.

• Past Commissions

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Testimonials

• Graham Coleman “excellent and thoughtful”
• Jean Sirius “you too can commission a short piece . . .. it’s very, very reasonable. fun, too”
• Nicole Wilkins “Good times”
• Jascha Narveson
• Polly Moller and again and again
• Josh Fruhlinger “stunning”

Press

• eBay Commissions Renewable Music
• TBD (2007). Celeste Hutchins /insert title here/ aworks
• commissioning works through ebay FundamentallySound
• Commission a New Piece Of Music via EBay All I Know²
• Links for the week The Rambler
• Music Commissioning on eBay Podcomplex
• Support the Arts: Commission Music HurdAudio

Philosophy

This is a proof of concept for the viability of music in the internet age.

What is music but data? Data wants to be free. People love to share. On the one hand, we have the RIAA fighting the future (and the present) by suing all their customers. That business model is not sustainable and has numerous other problems. On the other hand, we have the sharers – people who love music and post their favorite pieces on the internet, via a website or p2p or whatever. And in the middle we have artists – me and others like me. The RIAA hasn’t done much for me lately, but neither has p2p, really. When musicians ask me how they’re supposed to cover the costs of recording if their music gets traded for free online, all I can say is what the blogosphere has been saying. Fans will buy merch. Fans will paypal you donations, like a tip jar. The fans will come through, somehow. But how, really? Merch is a logo on a piece of material. A logo is data. The logos, like the tunes they stand for, want to be free. So all we really have is the virtual tip jar.

Some of us do give virtual tips, but most don’t. Freeing mp3s to your fans isn’t like busking. There’s no eye contact. There’s no presence. This model is not sustainable, either. How many of us actually go and paypal every artist who we’ve downloaded and like? And what do the fans get in return? A moral satisfaction, sure, but not enough to make the model work. In practice, the fans get very little for their efforts.

Artists are left with the problem of how to distribute their music such that it makes it to their fans and they cover their costs and can live. Moreover, the manner of distribution and monetary compensation should capture the zeitgeist of sharing and direct involvement. The fans must get something tangible in return, in a time when tangibility itself is becoming slippery.

I think commissioning is the answer to this dilemma. The commission amount covers costs. The fans get something real in return – their name attached to the work – a credit as an integral part of the creation. Because as the RIAA knows and fears, the fans have been integral all along. This is one answer to the question of how smaller artists can thrive in a direct-to-consumer, sharing sort of environment. The gift economy! The commissioner gives money to the artist who gives music to hir fans. Like other gift economies, the value of the gifts grow as it spreads to more and more people. Instead of fighting the internet economies of data, this model requires it.

I think Ebay is a natural fit for this project. The auction aspect means that minimal costs are covered and the value of the fan’s gift is in proportion to the value in which other fans hold it. In any case, some sort of discrete transaction method is required. A popular artist could get more commissions than s/he could hope to fill otherwise.

If somebody gets this concept to work in practice, then we have the new model. So here’s my trial seeking a proof of concept. Music can be free and artists and fans can cooperate and thrive without leech-like corporations persecuting both.