D.I.Y.

Why Amanda Fucking Palmer Is Never Afraid To Ask For A Fan’s Money

Taking A Stand As A Virtual Street Performer

Excerpted from Amanda Palmer's blog:image from img.metblogs.com

 listen.

artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art.

artists used to rely on middlemen to collect their money on their behalf, thereby rendering themselves innocent of cash-handling in the public eye.

artists will now be coming straight to you (yes YOU, you who want their music, their films, their books) for their paychecks.

please welcome them. please help them. please do not make them feel badly about asking you directly for money…

…i am shameless, and fearless, when it comes to money and art.

i can’t help it: i come from a street performance background.

i stood almost motionless on a box in harvard square, painted white, relinquishing my fate and income to the goodwill and honor of the passers-by.

i spent years gradually building up a tolerance to the inbuilt shame that society puts on laying your hat/tipjar on the ground and asking the public to support your art.

i was harassed, jeered at, mocked, ignored, insulted, spit at, hated.

i was also applauded, appreciated, protected, loved….all by strangers passing me in the street…

i did this for 5 years, and i made a living that way…

..And for the last 10 years, i have been working my ass off in a different way: tirelessly making music, traveling the world, connecting with people, trying to keep my balance, almost never taking a break and, frankly, not making a fortune doing it. i still struggle to pay my rent sometimes. i’m still more or less in debt from my last record…

taking my stand as a virtual street performer is the best thing that’s happened to my career and i revel in it.

and i love bringing people along for the ride.

i believe in the future of cheap art, creative enterprise, and an honorable public who will put their money where there mouth is, or rather, their spare change where their heart is.

can i get a fucking amen?

LOVE

afp

Bruce Houghton on 10/15/2009 in D.I.Y. | Permalink | Comments (11)
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11 Comments

  1. I’m a bit puzzled as to whom this is supposed to be addressed. Anyone who would care enough to read this, let alone even know who Amanda Palmer is, is already a convert. Anyone who loves music will gladly buy albums, T-shirts, tickets, etc to be a part of what you are doing.
    Poeple who would call themselves a fan and yet never spend a dime on an artist would be few and far between.
    My hunch is that the real problem lies in a much more apathetic attitude towards music as an artform than there used to be.
    If you could “take the temperature” of society as a whole to measure how excited people are by new music, I bet it would be a lot colder now than it was in decades past.
    The implication of an article like this is that there are hordes of rabid fans out there who are loving music and madly downloading while keeping their cash firmly in their wallet. I just don’t think this is the case, I think the real problem is that a lot less people are “fans of music” now than used to be.

  2. “I’m a bit puzzled as to whom this is supposed to be addressed.”
    Most likely lame fucking bloggers who condone and even endorse P2P and spew trash about how musicians MUST give away their music for free and sell t-shirts for a living.

  3. Sam – I don’t think there are fewer fans. There are rather fewer fans: 1)spread over more artists 2)unwilling to pay for music.
    JP – I believe music should only be given away free for a purpose – to gain fans, gather emails, introduce a new album, etc.
    Its its a fact that Amanda Palmer (nor I) invented that musicians and music companies need to find additional revenue streams to survive.
    Sorry, but them’s the facts…

  4. It’s also worth reading the full post — she touches on something I think is really interesting: what if the artist is not ‘starving’? Could/should a musician make six figures asking for donations/sponsorships/subscriptions? If Matthew Ebel (or any one of the ‘new music’ icons) was paying off a new Jaguar and a summer cottage, how would that influence fans’ perceptions?

  6. I’m way into this Arts and Consciousness link you posted on your blog:
    In Arts & Consciousness we have always taught our students that art is intrinsically valuable. We haven’t emphasized the commercial aspects of art, but have instead focused on art’s connection to self-affirmation, health, cultural identity and spiritual truth. We have proceeded from the assertion that if these things are adequately achieved, then money will be received by the artist as a natural and inevitable result of having created new value in the world. We teach students that this is the essence of creative process as well as development of a career in the arts.

  7. Not to uh, reply to my own comment, but I wish Hypebot would start with this premise in mind and work forward, instead of starting with $$$ in mind and working backwards.

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