ONE SERENADE™
gigeconomy.oneserenade.com The job The money How it runs What we sell What you own Where we are

The composer
and singer
gig economy

For us, by us

One Serenade is a gift service. Someone orders a song; singers arrive at a door and sing it. Every song is written by a composer here and sung by a singer here.

The rates are fixed and published. You keep your copyright, pick your own days, and are paid weekly.

One thing plainly, up front: some choral music can be bought, and we buy it where it fits. What can't be bought is the version that works at a door. That's the job.

N
Nioe · founder, One Serenade
Choral singer in Charlotte · ten years at Edible Arrangements · 69 Kittredge
Watch first · 2 min ▶2:14
Who I am and why I built this. Where the idea came from, what I learned delivering gifts for a decade, and exactly what I need from you.
Composers & arrangers

Write what
doesn't exist

Published choral music is written for thirty people and a piano. A doorstep has four people and no piano, ninety seconds, and no intro to hide behind. Nobody sells that. Write it once, and get paid every single time it's sung on somebody's front step.

Write for the doorstep
$15 per composition, per delivery  ·  you keep the copyright  ·  no exclusivity
Singers

Learn it.
Sing it. Get paid

Learn a part, pass an audition, get sent out. You pick your own days and your own radius. Every gig is one song at one door, and it takes about ninety minutes of your Saturday. Your music is bought for you and it's yours to keep.

Sing for us
$27.50+ per sung song  ·  paid weekly  ·  tips are entirely yours
The work

What can be bought,
and what can't

Published choral music is for sale at about $2.75 a copy, and we buy it where it fits. Here is where it stops fitting.

It has a piano in it

Pop octavos put the harmonic bed in the accompaniment. Sung a cappella on a doorstep, it has holes in it — no bass under the verse, no drive.

It's written for thirty people

An octavo assumes a section on each part. Four voices, one per part, is different writing. Nobody publishes solo or duo arrangements, because no chorus needs one.

It's the wrong shape

Three and a half minutes with an intro vamp, built for a stage. A doorstep is ninety seconds, starts cold, and has to end cleanly enough that four people can walk away.

Most of it doesn't exist

Publishers' pop lists are curated for schools and churches. The song someone wants sung to their sister is rarely on one, and never in the voicing we need.

So the job is the doorstep version. A cappella, one voice per part, ninety seconds, cold open, clean ending. There is no catalogue of it anywhere, and it is the one thing that can't be bought.
And the originals. Two occasions have no song anyone already knows. Those are yours entirely — your copyright, your name, and nobody can compete with you by browsing a publisher's website.
The terms

What it pays

All of it. There is no second page.

$27.50+
Per sung song. $35 alone, $27.50 in a quartet. More on peak days and for whoever leads. Paid the following Friday.
$15
Per composition, per delivery. Every time, not once. Two of your songs in one order pays twice.
100%
Of tips. People tip well after you've sung to their mother. We don't touch them.
$50
A year in dues, taken 10% at a time from earnings. Nothing up front. Nothing owed if you never earn.
Where the money goes, plainly. We take no cut of your $27.50 or your $15 — those are yours in full. One Serenade earns on the retail price the customer pays, and on nothing else.

The $50 in dues is not our income. It is primarily a licensing pool, for sheet music of the more popular tunes. It comes out of earnings at 10% at a time, never up front, and you will see it accruing from your first delivery.
How it runs

What happens around you

The parts you don't have to arrange yourself.

You're screened before you're sent

Every singer passes a background check before a first door. It's paid for out of the order, not by you. If something comes back, you explain it before anyone decides — a record is not automatically a no.

You're paid weekly

Friday, by bank transfer, for everything delivered the week before. Earnings appear the moment a gig is marked complete, not when an invoice clears.

You're a contractor, not an employee

You choose your days, your radius and your songs, and you can decline anything. Above the annual threshold we file a 1099 and send you a copy.

Your address stays yours

We store a point on a map to work out travel — never a street. The recipient's address reaches you on the day of the gig, not before.

And we never film a serenade. If the person at the door asks for one more run of the song so they can record it, that happens only when every singer standing there has said yes. It's a setting on your profile.
The shop

What we're
selling

The listings, at the real published prices, with the real split on each one. The titles are working titles — none of these songs exists yet. That is the point of the page.

Read the cut, not the sticker. A four-voice order is $159. Four singers take $110 of it and the composer takes $15. The card company takes about $5. What's left runs the payments, the insurance and the software, and it is 18%. The price isn't chosen — it's what the singers and the composer earn, plus that.
What's yours

You own the
inventory

This isn't a company hiring you. It's infrastructure for selling something you made.

You keep the copyright

We license the right to have it performed here and nothing else. We never ask for exclusivity.

You set the protection

Per arrangement: view-only in the app, parts audio with no score, or a downloadable PDF. Changeable any time.

It leaves with you

Close your account and your work withdraws over 90 days — long enough that nothing already booked breaks.

Nobody judges your music

No panel, no submission review. Singers decide what's worth learning, which is a better filter than any of us.

The shop is open

Orders are being taken. What's short is the catalogue and the roster — which is the part you're for.

Write for the doorstep Sing for us See what we're selling
Capacity

Where we're open

Two thresholds decide it, and both are public.

A city takes orders once one composition covers each basic occasion, and starts sending crews once ten singers within singing distance have cleared an audition.

The number on each city is singers cleared and ready to be sent to a door there — not sign-ups, not interest. It is read live from the roster.