Feature Of The Week

January 16 2012 : Music Innovation

Peter Doran, a Mullingar musician who has written a number of songs, lined up the musicians, and booked the studio time for his next album, is hoping that a novel internet concept will enable his fans help him over the final hurdle. Like many singer/songwriters, the word struggling goes before the job description for Peter Doran, and that hurdle involves amassing the funding required to get his album beyond concept.

Peter is asking his fans to make online pledges to help meet the cost of this, his third album. Via the website pledgemusic.com/projects/peterdoran, fans can pledge as little as €10 - which will get them a full digital download of the new album they will have helped into being, along with a PDF document with lyrics and artwork, and some extra bits and pieces that the normal album buyer won't get. The system is tiered upwards, so, for example, someone who pledges €200 could find themselves one of just three proud owners of a piece of Peter's guitar.

"This year, my beautiful Martin acoustic was ruined in a car crash. I used this guitar heavily on both my previous records," explains Peter. For €500, he will write you a song; for €1m, fans can, he promises, have exclusive rights to his soul! To date, he has received 70 pledges, which have brought him 58% of the way towards his target. He has only 10 days from today (Wednesday) to reach the rest. The deal with the site is if he doesn't reach 100% within the target time, he gets nothing. If he gets more than 100% of what he needs, a percentage of the excess will go to Oxfam Ireland.

Peter loves what he does. Then again, he'd want to love what he does, for it's not easy being an independent artist - especially in a land that is recession-obsessed - not, mind you, that the word recession crosses Peter's lips over the course of his Westmeath Examiner interview. Growing up, from the age of 11, Peter's life was always going to be about music, as it was back then that his cousin Paddy Gavin got him into the electric guitar, and he was immediately hooked. Peter's next Mullingar gig is for 'Pledgers', and takes place on February 24 in the Kitchen Bar at John Daly's pub.

See peterdoran.com. To make a pledge in support of the new album, check out: pledgemusic.com/projects/peterdoran