D.I.Y.

Amanda Palmer Offers To Help Morrissey Crowdfund His Next Album

image from upload.wikimedia.orgAmanda Palmer, who successfully raised $1 million from her fans, has offered to help Morrissey crowdfund his next album on Kickstarter or PledgeMusic. Morrissey recently stated publically that he can't find a label to fund a record that he syas he wants to make, in part because his doctors told him not to tour.

"You have some of the most fanatical fans in the world; caring and
devoted people from countries far and wide who would be really, really
happy to support you at levels far beyond $5 just to have the songs in
their ears," wrote Palmer in an open letter. "You’re possibly one of the best candidates on the planet to use crowdfunding, because of who you are and what you mean."

Palmer Does The Math: $1.5 Million Net

"Given your record sales and history, let’s make a very conservative
guess that 500,000 people back you (i.e., pre-order a digital album) at
$5 each," writes Palmer in Salon. "That’s a total of $2.5 million. Assumptions galore, but
at a guess: Subtract the 20 percent you will need to pay out to
commissions (to your management and digital team) and processing (to the
crowdfunding platform) and you’ll be left with about $2 million.. If your album costs half a million to record, you’ll earn about $1.5
million. I don’t know what kind of advances and royalties you were getting from any of your previous labels, but I doubt they could compete with that."

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2 Comments

  1. Silly Amanda…here’s a closer-to-reality breakdown:
    20% to management
    5% to legal representation
    5% to business manager
    If you’re planning on making CDs (500,000 of them), that’ll be $300,000 on the low-end – not including fees for artwork…
    Guess what – Kickstarter and PledgeMusic don’t mail those fuckers out for you, so you better have some interns to stuff 500,000 envelopes…
    Right – you have to buy the envelopes too.
    Oh, don’t forget on average $2.00/package in shipping costs – more if you’re selling internationally.
    Don’t forget 5% of the fans who pledge will write in complaining that their CD got lost in the mail – so you’ll have to re-ship those…
    Are you gonna do any sort of radio promotion or online publicity? That’ll run a few grand a month…
    I hope Moz has a good manager to quarterback this whole thing…

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