Some of the experiences Amanda Palmer writes about in her book are condensed into a TED talk, which reached over 4 million views on Youtube.
In April 2012 Amanda Palmer she started a Kickstarter campaign to finance a new album after breaking up with Roadrunner Records and managed to raise in 31 days over a million dollars (ten times the aimed amount of 100 000 dollars). It is still the biggest amount ever raised for a music campaign on Kickstarter. The thumbnail picture of the promotional video of the campaign shows Amanda Palmer holding a card saying: ‘This is the future of music’.
After parting ways with Roadrunner Records, Palmer resorted to fan-funding to replace the financial support the label had offered in the past, while maintaining her creative freedom. There had been several incidents between her and the management of the label, but the conflict aggravated with a discussion of the ‘Leeds United’ video, in which certain shots of the musician’s belly were to be cut or altered to look ‘more flattering’. Palmer refused to change the video and wrote about it on her blog, stirring a strong reaction among her fans. The incident turned into a social media phenomenon, with fans creating a whole campaign over Tumblr and Twitter and a fan-created website called ‘The Rebellyon’, where hundreds of fans posted pictures of the bellies in solidarity. Following the ‘Rebellyon', Palmer had another meeting with the owner of Roadrunner, where she was told that her previous album had no commercial viability; however, she was bound with a four-album contract, where the label could drop her at any time, but she couldn’t drop the label. She didn’t hesitate to make the whole situation known to her fans and even wrote and performed a song addressed to the label in which she asked to be dropped. In 2010, Roadrunner released her from the contract after 6 years of collaboration and four albums.
In a post on her personal blog, Amanda Palmer wrote to express her happiness of being again in control of her creative outcomes:
’A lot of people have asked me if i have any regrets about signing with a major label. the answer: no. Now that i’m unshackled, I plan on doing a lot of really awesome and creative things with my songs and how people can pay for them – or, better yet, donate – now that I have control over my stuff.’
In the same post she announces a webcast in which she’d ‘toast with the team’ and invites everyone to ‘come over for a drink’ - in the virtual world, to celebrate the newly-achieved freedom and discuss with her fans the implications of it.
Clearly, in taking such a radical decision, Palmer trusted that her fan-base would support her music-making in the future - as it turned out to be the case.
In an interview dating from 2009, Palmer states: ‘I can connect with my fans without the label. That was not the case in 1990: back then, if the record label tied your hands, your hands were truly tied. My fans are so much more powerful than the media or the label because they're spreading the music around’ (Dombal, 2009).
There has been quite a lot of press coverage after the successful campaign and voices asking how she’d done it. The answer was: years and years of connecting with the fans, of establishing meaningful relationships, so special the audience that they would pay hundred, even thousand of pounds to support the artist.
Palmer tweets and updates her Facebook status several times a day; before Facebook and Twitter, together with Brian Viglione, the other half of the Dresden Dolls duo, she used to administrate a forum on the band’s website where she would engage in online discussions with the fan community. She shares fan artwork, asks for advice, voices her opinions about the current issues in the world and when she needs it, asks ‘shamelessly’ (in her own words) for help. This can range from crowdfunding a new album, to finding a place to crash in a fan’s house when on tour or asking for some recommendations of new music to listen on a late night. It seems like being social on the internet has unlimited benefits, but as she admits in an interview, ‘you have to actually LIKE it, otherwise you'll be miserable’.
There is a big difference between being famous and having a following. Talking about Palmer’s campaign, Yancey Trickler, a founder of Kickstarter. said: ‘It’s not about fame. Fame is a lot o people caring about you a little. What Amanda has is something different. It’s a few people caring about her a lot.’ (Sisario, 2012)
That would explain how she was able to raise such a huge amount of money, even though Roadrunner thought her album a flop for not selling enough copies. Both ‘Yes Virginia’, the second Dresden Dolls album and ‘Who killed Amanda Palmer’ (her first solo record) sold little over 30 000 copies. The numbers are not great for a major record label artist and the return profit wasn’t able meet expectations in the conditions of selling the albums at the standard price of a record. But if we imagine 30 000 people given the opportunity of pay-what-you-wish for the album of a band or artist they highly appreciate, we can get a glimpse of what happened with Palmer’s Kickstarter campaign. Interestingly enough, the number of backers was around 25 000 people (just around how many people bought her albums), out of which more than half pledged over £25, over 11 000 people pledged over £100, 100 people pledged £1000, 34 were rewarded with a concert in their house in exchange for contributions of £5000 each and 2 backers earn a whole afternoon and dinner with Amanda Palmer for their support of £10.000 each.
20 of the 34 house parties costing £5000 were funded by communities of fans, who gathered together and contributed £100 each. Such practices were encouraged by Palmer, who, throughout her book, ‘The Art of Asking’, stresses the role of the artist of not only creating a connection with the fans, but of nurturing connection between the fans to create a community built around their common interest (Palmer, 2014, p. 122).
This only supports some ideas that Kusek puts forward in his book 'The Future of Music', especially thw idea of music going through a change from being a product to being a service. Connection with an artist means experiences and feelings that become valuable to the individual. People buy more than the music, they create personal ties with their favourite artists and, even in the age of file-sharing and digital piracy, if a performance ‘touches people’s lives, it will have rewards for that artist.’ (Kusek, 2005, p. 53). We are now talking about more than purchasing music as a commodity or about music as mere entertainment; if an artist combines talent, imagination and brand with good social and networking skills and manages to find his or her niche, the amount of support they receive might prove surprising. And in the age of internet, reaching out to people is easier than ever. For artists, the hard part of the job is to define the niche and find a way to differentiate themselves.
‘Success being equaled to selling more than 500 000 albums is a myth’ says Kusek (2005, p.23) and Amanda Palmer’s Kickstarter campaign stands proof. But the fact that it is possible, doesn’t mean that everyone can do it. In the age of the ‘social artist’, as Palmer coins it, what happens to the artists who are not social? What happens to those who don’t know how to, or don’t want to connect with their fans in this way? Of course, there are always people who can do it for them - but, at their early careers, artists cannot normally afford to pay for their online presence to be taken care of, and not everybody has a friend or a partner willing to do it for them - I know from my own experience.
References:
Dombal, R. (2009). Amanda Palmer Tells Roadrunner Records: "Please Drop Me". Available at: http://pitchfork.com/news/34979-amanda-palmer-tells-roadrunner-records-please-drop-me/ (Accessed 9.10.2015)
Kusek, D.and Gerd, L. (2005) The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution. Boston, MA: Berklee Press.
Palmer, A. (2012). How Amanda Palmer Built An Army Of Supporters: Connecting Each And Every Day, Person By Person Available at: https://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120502/15324918745/how-amanda-palmer-built-army-supporters-connecting-each-every-day-person-person.shtml (Accessed: 9.10.2015)
Palmer, Amanda (2014) The Art Of Asking, Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Let People Help. London: Piatkus
Sisario, B. (2012). Amanda Palmer Takes Connecting With Her Fans to a New Level. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/arts/music/amanda-palmer-takes-connecting-with-her-fans-to-a-new-level.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1 (Accessed 9.10.2015)
TED, (2013). Amanda Palmer: The art of asking. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g (Accessed 16.10.2015)
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