Last week, SellaBand celebrated their first anniversary with a 'SellaBration' in Amsterdam's pop temple, Paradiso. Our description of the concept when they launched: aiming to empower independent artists, SellaBand has created a platform that enables fans to sponsor bands, and get a piece of the action in return. How it works: fans, dubbed Believers, find an artist they like on SellaBand.com. For USD 10, they can buy a share, or 'Part'. Once the band has sold 5,000 parts, SellaBand arranges a professional recording, including top studios, A&R managers and producers. Believers receive a limited edition cd of the recording.
So—what happened over the past year? Fans have invested over USD 1,000,000 in the bands they believe in. The first band to raise USD 50,000 was Nemesea, which did so in 83 days. Six other bands have also raised 50K. Three of them—Nemesea, Cubworld and Second Person—have produced and launched their first album, and the other four are hard at work in the recording studio. In total, 4,806 artists signed up to SellaBand.
As pointed out by SellaBand's Music Director, Dagmar Heijmans: "Twelve months ago we didn't know if it would work. Well, we've proven that. People are willing to pay USD 10 (or more) to be part of an artist's success." For the coming year, SellaBand aims to make it easier for anyone to operate like a record executive, by giving them the tools to scout talent, track the recording process and promote 'the heck out of the artist' once an album has been released. We'll keep an eye on them and will dutifully report back to you ;-)
Website: www.sellaband.com
Contact: info@sellaband.com
A similar website was launched recently called www.slicethepie.com
Heres a similar idea from the UK but about owning a football club.
http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/
Hi Julian,
Thanks for your comment! Yes -- we've heard about slicethepie.com. Will have another look.
And John -- we've written about myfootballclub.co.uk a few times. Our latest update can be found here:
http://www.springwise.com/lifestyle_leisure/crowdbuying_a_soccer_team_upda/
A couple things I would like to point out in regards to Sellaband.com and music distributions. They have partnered up with CDBaby.com who is a 1 stop sales force for Indie artists selling thier music via 40+ digital sites. (More info http://netvalar.blogspot.com/2007/08/digital-distribution-through-cdbabycom.html) along with that as an artist finsihes recording 3 tracks are giving away for free and the rest of the tracks on the album are sold via Sellaband.com itself. For an example of this http://www.sellaband.com/believer/netvalar/shop/cubworld/ physical distribution of the cds has been set-up through 2 Europe companies with the US being hammeres out as we speak. So Sellaband.com is about more then getting fan funded album mastering. They also help with promotions and sales.
You should also check out http://www.dittomusic.com, we used them for our single and album releases.
For £25 Ditto provide you with over 50 sites, and not just the US based ones.
Also online accounting, a fixed release date, 4 week turnaround and you can become eligible for the UK charts.
They cover a total of 700 worldwide stores and take 0% commission on sales.
They have had 7 UK top 40 singles, all with unsigned artists.
A better service for UK and US artists i think.