Last week, Amanda Palmer was one of the speakers at the TED2013 conference, and she delivered an affecting 13-and-a-half-minute speech titled “The Art Of Asking,” in which she detailed her rise from a “living statue” mime working the streets of Boston to an internationally known musician whose current revenue model relies primarily on the direct support of fans. Palmer drew strong correlations between the two professions, noting that each depends on interpersonal connection. As a mime, says Palmer, she would regularly interact with “lonely people who looked like they hadn’t talked to anyone in weeks,” and then, “we would sort of fall in love a little bit.” For Palmer, the wordless exchange went something like this:
My eyes would say, “Thank you. I see you.”
Their eyes would say, “Nobody ever sees me. Thank you.”
That same connection, argues Palmer, is made between musician and fan, and in her TED Talk, Palmer recounts such exchanges, including one in which she and her band crashed at the home of an 18-year-old fan and her family — undocumented immigrants from Honduras. The family, says Palmer, slept on couches so Palmer and her band could take the beds; an arrangement that caused Palmer to wonder, “Is this fair?” The next morning, says Palmer, the fan’s mother took the singer aside and, “in her broken English,” said:
“Your music has helped my daughter so much. Thank you for staying here. We’re all so grateful.”
And I thought, “This is fair.”
This, argues Palmer, is an example of how the music industry will evolve — with musicians not demanding fans pay for music, but asking them to contribute, monetarily and/or otherwise. Palmer has of course been at the forefront of this evolution: Among other things, she raised a record nearly $1.2 million via Kickstarter for her last album, and requested musician-fans of “professional-ish” ability contribute to her live show in exchange for non-monetary rewards — the latter of which, as you might remember, became the source of some scrutiny and criticism, causing Palmer to respond at length, but after some hedging, eventually offer money to those fans chosen to contribute.
Palmer addresses this, too, in her TED Talk — to some extent, anyway. She never explains why she chose to finally pay those musicians to whom she initially offered no payment, but she does offer a theory regarding the initial criticism: “[Those critics] weren’t with us on the sidewalk. And they couldn’t see the exchange that was happening between me and my crowd: an exchange that was very fair to us, but alien to them.” (For at least one member of her crowd, that exchange was not “very fair,” which played no small part in the initial coverage of Palmer’s gambit.)
For Palmer, the music industry’s attempts to make money are wrongheaded. She notes that after wriggling out of her seven-album deal with Roadrunner Records in 2010, she encouraged file-sharing among her fans. She says, “The media asked, ‘Amanda, the music industry’s tanking, and you encourage piracy; how did you make all these people pay for music?’ And the real answer is, I didn’t make them. I asked them. And through the very act of asking people, I connected with them. And when you connect with them, people want to help you.”
To be fair, Palmer makes some powerful and passionate arguments in her presentation; however, she leaves unaddressed the work done by Roadrunner to promote her, starting in 2004, when they signed her. In a 2010 open letter to the label — written after they finally agreed to drop her — she stressed the significant impact the label had on her career at its nascent stage:
no other label in america would sign us, but you did. all the cool, hip, indie labels didn’t think enough people would like us. they passed.
you saw our potential. for a while you worked very hard for us. you spent money on us, and you helped people find and hear our music.
when we first toured in europe and australia, you made sure that the radio stations and the magazines in those countries got our record.
now there are millions of people around the globe who know my band and my name. i am so, so grateful for that help.
i don’t know how far i would have gotten on my own steam in that same amount of time.
The need for that sort of deep-pockets assistance is not included in Palmer’s TED Talk, which she closes with what I’d consider a pretty empty platitude in the context she presents it: “I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is, ‘How do we make people pay for music?’ What if we started asking, ‘How do we let people pay for music?’”
Watch Palmer’s full TED Talk below.
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I love most of Amanda Palmer’s music and I think some this stuff she is doing is really cool, but she falls victim to this mindset a lot of people (particularly artistic people) have that the world they operate in is broken, and it might be, but only they know how to fix it. So they go around giving people ideological ultimatums about the “way it all should be” when they’re really only basing they’re opinion on their own limited experiences and don’t actually have any real lasting solutions to offer. This kind of “asking/bohemian” lifestyle might be fine for her, but I think she’ll find that it, in of itself, isn’t really sustainable and probably not for every musician in the first place.
I think the problem here is, she’s presenting solutions based on incomplete information. Much of the connection she has made would not have been possible without the backing of a label, who backed her and brought her music to the attention of a wider audience than would have been possible otherwise.
And none of the people who have been trying this model of hers for decades and failing to make much headway are getting TED talks, despite basically being perfect counterexamples.
She neglects to mention that when she started crowdsourcing, she already had that critical component – a crowd (she mentiones that 25000 people kicked in or her big push…that right there seems like an indicator that she got something out of the label deal after all). Most indie musicans who throw their stuff on Kickstarter are lucky if they’re known by more than a handfull of people. It’s hard to raise 1.2mil when you have 2000 fans, no matter how engaged you are on twitter and facebook.
She also negelcts to mention that as a rule, Amanda Palmer fans fall into a demographic that is generally young and tech-savvy. So she’s got the perfect target audience. If your audience skews differnetly demographically, particualrly with respect to social media consumption, the “critical mass” required for a successful crowdsource project could be much different.
To be honest this criticism applies to most TED talks which are always big on cool sounding utopian ideas that vaguely promise to CHANGE EVERYTHING FOREVER and also completely short of any sort of real world application.
You use the word “bohemian” like it’s a bad thing and your comment leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
How about the fact that Palmer is a huge liar?
The Kickstarter campaign donations were huge and none of them can be tracked or verrified. They are most likely a Scientology scam.
Billboard indicates that over 90% of (Amanda Palmer’s) 23,000+ units “sold” (which propelled her to #10 on their chart for day) came from digital downloads.
EVERY person who ordered ANYTHING from her Kickstarter – 24,883 people — received a download code which, when you really look at it, indicates that not even all of the Kickstarter contributors bothered with downloading her album — and that in effect, for all of her controversy and promotion (by her and her and Gaiman), she actually didn’t get all of her fans to gin up her pre-ordered estimate and only sold some 1,700 ‘new” albums she and her team hadn’t already factored into her unit movement.
Amanda palmer is a lie.
What I learned: those “eyebrows” of hers are still really frightening.
Will start taking her opinions more seriously when her hair follicles make their way from her underarms up to her brow.
GUYS, I CAN’T STRESS THIS ENOUGH: A smooth underarm has so many benefits.
Amanda Palmer is so smug.
Well I should probably say she comes across so smug.
I have mixed opinions about this TED talk, and how she justifies her actions. I think it is amazing that she has such a tremendous emotional connection with her fans, but given how she talks about that connection, it feels like she is more into business than art. I cannot get past the lingering feeling that she is taking advantage of her fans, which is a fine line when it comes to making a connection.
As a tremendous Weakerthans/John K. Samson fan, I understand what it is like to feel that connection with an artist, especially when they portray themselves as one of the crowd. When the Weakerthans had a member of the audience come on to stage and play, I thought it was amazing; When John K. Samson asked for a beer from the crowd and did cheers with everyone before going into a song, I was ecstatic. So what makes the Weakerthans any different in my mind than Amanda Palmer, since I would personally be honored to have them stay at my place? To be honest, I think it is the background events that really affect my opinion of Amanda Palmer. If she were to ask local musicians to play with her during concerts, I would not be so bothered; if she were to stay at fans’ homes for free, I would have shrugged it off, however she raised $1.2 million for her most recent album (10x what she was requesting), before even releasing it. She is not some poor, struggling, indie musician, and this does not even consider that her husband is also successful. She could have easily supported her tour with the money from tickets alone, much less the $1 million left over from her current kickstarter, but instead she stayed for free at an undocumented immigrants house, and it is fair since that daughter loved Amanda Palmer’s music?
Personally, I have mixed opinions in regards to using kickstarter to get an album out, especially if you are a well known artist, however it was all of Amanda Palmer’s actions that makes me feel that she is taking advantage of her fans, as opposed to connecting to them. There is nothing wrong with making money off of y our music and accompanying merch, however Amanda does it in a way that is exceptionally sleazier than even Jay-Z (does anyone remember Occupy All Streets).
“She is not some poor, struggling, indie musician, and this does not even consider that her husband is also successful. She could have easily supported her tour with the money from tickets alone, much less the $1 million left over from her current kickstarter, but instead she stayed for free at an undocumented immigrants house, and it is fair since that daughter loved Amanda Palmer’s music?”
This right here is what the whole Amandagate debacle boils down to. People aren’t reacting negatively to the notion of a musician relying on the generosity of his or her fans; they’re reacting negatively to Amanda Palmer doing so, despite the fact that she has vast financial resources at her disposal and clearly doesn’t need to. I’m reminded of ODB picking up his welfare check in a limousine.
She did post a breakdown of where all the money went, and okay, yeah, she did spend all 1.2mil on premiums and making the album and all that.
But it doesn’t change the fact that it looked tacky as all hell to spend a few weeks crowing to every media outlet that would listen about how successful the project was, then turn around and say “yeah, I can’t pay professionalish musicians.” While the truth of the matter may have facually been that there wasn’t the money for it, it looked really bad. I won’t begrudge her unwillingness to get funded by her spouse’s resources, nor will I say that she mis-spent her money, but I will say that she really did not handle the PR side of it well at all.
Honestly, if she’d been a little less tone-deaf about how she approached it, it would never have been a controversy. Just say “hey who wants to play with me onstage, we’ll have auditions, it’ll be fun!” probably would’ve been enough – plenty of artists do that, some bigger than Palmer. But she went and used the word “professional”, which last time I checked meant “someone who works for money.” which pissed off the world of professional session players.
The fact that she still thinks it’s because people were yelling “Get a job” at her shows that she hasn’t quite figured out why people were upset.
Amanda Palmer verbally laundered the money but when Gawker checked, she lied about the cost of everything.
The British have the perfect phrase for this: Taking the piss. That is pretty much every recent career move Amanda Palmer has made. It’s even more obnoxious that she’s grandstanding about imposing on her fans while she’s got $1 million from that Kickstarter campaign.
*in her bank account* is how that was supposed to end.
She doesn’t.
http://amandapalmer.net/blog/where-all-this-kickstarter-money-is-going-by-amanda/
I think the issue is that her $1.2 million was so so public. She stated in her talk that about the same number of people backed her as her ‘failed’ DD album… I don’t really think she is making much more than she would have (in fact, since with so much of the time she spends on social media making things like this possible… if you consider that work – which it is for her – than she probably makes less than minimum wage, but works 100+ hrs a week – she would probably make MORE with a label). But because she used kickstarter – which meant that the money made was public – and it is perceived as going directly to her bank account, everybody seems to assume that she is a millionaire.
And, as somebody who got the backer cd, I am vaguely surprised that the package + shipping + overhead didn’t actually cost more than $25. It was super high quality.
Empty platitude in a TED Talk? I’m shocked!
I feel like Palmer means well but SNEAKERS GET DIRTY..CONVERSE…whoops sorry about that…what was I saying again?
This All Star ad has to be the worst one to hit the Stereogum wrapper yet — It keeps hijacking the screen, and if you’re on a certain screen size, there’s no way to click off of it.
At least the ad is informative. I learned that if an attractive, put-together-looking young woman wears Converse shoes—excuse me, SNEAKERS—then she’ll suddenly look like a drunk party girl who just came inside after getting caught in a torrential downpour without an umbrella.
If you download Adblock Plus, you’ll never have to look at another ad on this site again. The left and right side of the screen are always the most lovely shade of gray.
Who the fuck is TED?
He’s a foul-mouthed, anthropomorphic teddy bear.
I’m glad you didn’t use the words “funny” or “clever” or “lovable” in that description.
I stopped reading after the words:”living statue” mime. Does it get even grosser?
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lol, from now on, whenever I rip into someone, I’m ending it with that line: “you’re an asshole for this reason and that reason, and I feel sorry for you, because you don’t even see what an asshole you are and probably won’t ever—but I wish you the best!”
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They were until you arrived!
My life is filled with emptiness. Oxymorons too.
I saw Amanda Palmer live in Hollywood at Amoeba Records. Say what you will about her but she put on a true show. Her grasp of true intimacy with the audience was spellbinding to say the least. She and her band did covers of “Polly” by Nirvana and “Idioteque” b Radiohead and it was done bare bones instrumentation style, and so raw, visceral, poignant, haunting and beautiful. I really feel she is an artist. I don’t focus on her eyebrows, or the incidentals of her grooming. She’s wildly gifted. Her history as a mime is probably one of the reasons she can connect so darn well in a live setting. And I hope I get at least one positive like for my new attempt at being sincere in my post(s) :)
i do focus on her eyebrows though, c’mon
also if this is some sort of attempt at satire mixing feelings you may or may not have about the artist with statements that may be either heartfelt or banal or some combination of the two….
i dont care, it’s still about music.
Oh, this awful woman.
Why the hell is it called “TED?”
Amanda Palmer and Marnie Stern should go on a date! They’re just going to have a really hard time figuring out who pays…
I’m going to start a Kickstarter campaign to buy Amanda Palmer new eyebrows.
“Jerry, hello!”
I’m one of the few people here who actually likes her ;)
Yes, she made a lot of money with her kickstarter campaign – but she also said what the consequences of that will be – bigger concerts, better videos, more merchandising. And everything of that happened – especially her music videos for this album were really amazing and it’s obvious that some money was spent on them.
I never really understood why people were so upset by her asking fans to play at her concerts. She doesn’t force them, she just asks for help – and if I were able to play the violin I would have been thrilled to be on stage with her. Just because she made a bunch of money with crowdfunding doesn’t mean that she’s a millionaire now. Think of your favourite artists – wouldn’t you be thrilled to be on stage with them and be part of the show?
Yes, the TED talk seems like she’s more into business – but let’s not forget that most of the TED people have no idea who she is and they don’t want to hear about her fans etc…
I’ve met her before and after shows and I always had the impression that she’s really honest about everything she does. She talks to her fans, enjoys being around them…
I think we should just respect her choice to ask her fans for help…and apparently her fans are willing to help her – and that’s what’s important.
She’s obviously talented and has made a deep personal connection with her fanbase, and that’s why she’s very successful. The reason people were upset about her soliciting unpaid musicians is because doing so devalues the work of professional musicians (this was sort of egregious when she specifically requested “professional-ish” musicians, who were to submit resumes and recordings prior to approval, and then sit in on rehearsals prior to performance). If every band came through town culling its own regional fanbase for free labor, that would put a lot of working musicians out of jobs (which aren’t exactly easy to come by anyway). Furthermore, she plainly had the money to pay for these contributions. The argument was best made by Palmer fan and professional musician Amy Vaillancourt-Sals in an open letter to Amanda Palmer, which I recommend reading. That Palmer eventually decided to pay the musicians who worked with her suggests to me that she too saw this as unfair exploitation. That she had the courage to correct her errors is no small thing, though, and worthy of commendation.
She paints a very uplifting portrait of the value and diversity of goods and services, while delicately justifying emotional prostitution. “No one notices you? Give me a buck and I’ll notice you.” She’s no doubt sincere, but also delusional.
It saddens me that Stereogum won’t stop with the “lets shit on Amanda Palmer” party. She’s trying something new and different and she’s not afraid to talk about it. Prior to the last ten years of the internet’s cyclical self-feeding its own constant need to hate everything, she would have been considered a revolutionary, heaped with praise and compliments. I have nothing else to contribute to the masturbatory bashing of this woman.
I bet you also thought Bernie Madoff was “trying something new and different.”
That would be an interesting comment if it made any sense. The two don’t relate to each other on any level and you know it.
I look forward to one of you down voters explaining how the two are alike.
I hate Amanda Palmer because she’s an ugly idiot who has no talent whatsoever. She can’t sing or play the piano properly. She is always so out of tune. Even Taylor Swift is better than her. The music industry doesn’t need Amanda. It already has Tori Amos and Regina Spektor, who have loads more talent. I especially hate how Amanda murdered the songs of my favorite band, Radiohead. Oh yeah, her armpits are uglier than the girl who sings for Dragonette.
Except the entire Kickstarter project is a lie. Amanda Palmer got pledges from Scientology to boost her career and will pay the money back into the cult. The whole thing was a lie and a scam to build up downloads and get press. Amanda Palmer cannot sell a fraction of a million dollars without a con. Palmer is a liar and belongs to a filthy cult.