Get The Fans To Do It For You

So we have been talking alot about music and crowdsourcing lately on this blog, partly I think thats because music as an art form is a natural fit for a concept like crowdsourcing. Just think about it, music is an incredibly emotional thing and as soon as you have a fan that feels he or she is an essential component of an artist or band they become full blown supporters, who often spread the word about new albums and songs just because they want people to feel that same as they do. Kat has covered some interesting ways that artist have been getting their music out there but what about artists and bands that are truly putting themselves out into the crowdsourcing world?

Need money for your album? Ask the fans....

The first one I would like to look at is Sellaband. Essentially, Sellaband lets anyone post a profile on its site, complete with images and music. Visitors to the site can invest in the band's future by buying shares ($10 a share) and become in Sellaband lingo "believers." The idea is that the believers then go out and spread the word, recruiting fellow believers. When the band raises $50,000, Sellaband takes them into the studio with a veteran producer and mixer, then presses a limited edition CD that get sent out to each believer. The band can then purchase additional CDs at cost, using them to sell at gigs, send to radio, etc.

So far the idea seems to be doing well, there are 29 artists who have registered on the site that have reached the $50,000 mark and 15 artists have recorded their albums. Nemesea, the first band to get to the studio through Sellaband have even gained some mainstream success, check it out here. Other concepts similar, but with slight differences, to Sellaband are Slice The Pie, The Sixty One and Our Stage.

Need an original and creative music video? Ask the fans...

The most ambitious project carried out so far has to be The Beastie Boys concert video Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That, which is the first concert film, or big-time film of any kind, shot by amateurs. Basically the band distributed Hi8 videocams to 50 fans at a 2004 show in New York City - and asked them to record everything they saw. Front man and MC Adam Yauch then combined his favorite bits from the 100-plus hours of footage into a feature film.  This gives you the experience of, in the words of the bands frontman,  “seeing pretty much exactly what the people who were there saw” Read more about this project here and here.

The Beastie Boys were not the only ones to use fans to create videos and content for them. Incubus ran a competition amongst fans to see who could produce the best video for their song ‘Dig’. Here’s the winning video picked by the fans and band:




Check out the competition site here to see the other entries.

Need to take your music further than ever before? Ask the fans....

Artists have taken fan involvement in their music even further than just getting them to join in the making of a music video...what about the creating of the actual song its self? There are two bands that have taken this step, both Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead  have set up sites where fans can download the split raw tracks (musicians call them stems) of a certain song (ie the, Drums, Vocals, Bass and Guitar) and then using audio editing software create re-mix’s of the song. You can then go back to the site and upload your re-mix for other fans to download...for free. So far Radiohead have only done this with two songs ‘Nude’ and ‘Reckoner’ check out their site here. Nine Inch Nails have been a bit more adventurous and released their whole album, you can check that out here.

Whew, so as you can see crowdsourcing and music really do mix, anyone else got some cool examples?