ONE SERENADE™
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The composer
and singer
gig economy

For us, by us

One Serenade is a gift service. Somebody orders a song, and singers show up at a door and sing it. Every one of those songs was written by one of us and sung by one of us.

I built the platform — the payments, the dispatch, the rights, the customers. I can't write the music and I can't sing all the parts. That's the whole reason this page exists.

And I'm going to be straight with you about one thing up front, because you'd work it out anyway: some of the music can be bought. Published choral arrangements exist and I'll be buying them. What can't be bought is the version that works at a door — and that is a real job that only you can do.

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
Straight about the job

What can be bought,
and what can't

I'd rather you heard this from me than found it out. A lot of choral music is for sale, already licensed, at about $2.75 a copy. Where a published arrangement exists and works, I will buy it — it would be daft not to. Here is exactly where that stops working.

Published choral music has a piano in it

Look at any pop octavo and you'll find rhythm section parts and an accompaniment track sold alongside. The harmonic bed lives in the piano. Sing it a cappella on a doorstep and it has holes in it — no bass under the verse, no drive, changes that were somebody else's job.

It's written for thirty people

An SATB octavo assumes a section on each part. Four voices, one per part, is a different piece of writing. And nobody publishes solo or duo arrangements of anything, because no chorus needs one.

It's the wrong length and shape

Three and a half minutes with an intro vamp, written for a stage. A doorstep is ninety seconds, starts cold, and has to end in a way that lets four people walk away without an awkward beat.

Most of it doesn't exist at all

Publishers' pop lists are curated for schools and churches. The song someone actually wants sung to their sister is usually not on it, and never in the voicing we need.

So the job isn't "arrange public domain." The job is the doorstep version — a cappella, one voice per part, ninety seconds, cold open, clean ending. It is a real piece of craft, there is no catalogue of it anywhere, and it is the one thing I cannot buy my way out of.
And the originals. Every occasion we sell has a song somebody already knows. Two don't. Nobody has written the perfect ninety-second song for a person who has just been promoted, or the one that's funny and a little bit pointed. Those are yours entirely — your copyright, your name, and the only place in this catalogue nobody can compete with you by browsing a publisher's website.
No small print

What it actually pays

All of it. There isn't a second page.

$27.50+
Per sung song. $35 singing alone, $27.50 in a quartet. More on peak days, more for whoever leads. Paid the following Friday.
$15
Per composition, per delivery. Not once — every time. Two of your songs in one order pays twice.
100%
Of tips. People tip more than you'd expect when you've just sung to their mother. We don't touch them.
$50
App dues, a year, taken out of what you earn. Nothing up front. Nothing owed if you never earn. Once it's paid, it's paid.
That last one is the whole business model, so here it is plainly. One Serenade doesn't take a cut of your $27.50 or your $15 — those are yours in full. It makes money on the retail price the customer pays, and on $50 a year in app dues, collected out of earnings after you've earned them. If you never sing, you never owe anything. You'll see it accruing on your earnings screen from your very first delivery, so it can never be a surprise.
The shop, right now

See what we're
selling

This is the actual storefront. Real prices, real arrangements, real customers ordering them. Everything on it was written by somebody like you and is sung by somebody like you.

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 is not chosen; it is what the singers and the composer earn, plus that. This is written down because you'd find out anyway.
The part that matters

You own the
inventory

This isn't a company hiring you. It's infrastructure you use to sell something you made.

You keep the copyright

Your arrangement is yours. We license the right to have it performed here and nothing else, and we never ask for exclusivity.

You set the protection

Per arrangement: view-only in the app, parts audio with no score at all, or a downloadable PDF. Your call, changeable any time.

It leaves with you

Close your account and your work is withdrawn over 90 days — long enough that nothing already booked breaks, short enough that it's really leaving.

Nobody judges your music

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

It only works if
we fill it

The customers are arriving before the catalogue is. That's an unusual problem to have and it's the only one I've got.

Write for the doorstep Sing for us See what we're selling
Before you spend an evening on this

Where we
actually are

We are new and there is barely anything here yet. I know the composer and singer community and I know that can change in a week.

We start taking reservations for serenades as soon as we have one composition for each basic occasion, and we start fulfilling gigs in an area when we have 10 singers within singing distance. Check out the cities below. Light work!
Receipts

From when this was
just an idea

I filmed myself working this out before any of it existed. They're rough and I'm leaving them rough, because the whole point of this page is that you can see who you'd be doing this with.

▶4:02
The first version of the idea
Before there was a name for it
▶6:31
Why arrangements had to come first
Working out that I couldn't do this part myself
▶3:18
What I learned delivering gifts
Ten years of doorsteps, and what actually goes wrong