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Why Amanda Palmer Left the Music 'Industry' For Crowdfunding (digitaltrends.com)
Amanda Palmer says abandoning the commercial music industry for a subscription model made it possible to take more chances, like a new album with psychedelia artist Edward Ka-Spel. An anonymous reader quotes Digital Trends:
I spent my whole life in this music industry trying to figure out how to sell what I'm making. But I don't "sell" anymore -- I just have this magical net of supporters who are supporting me whether I choose to make a record with Edward or make a record with my dad, which I did last year... [S]ometimes, you absolutely want to do ridiculous, noncommercial stuff. The Patreon patrons have been a godsend in that sense. I've had to continually re-educate myself that this isn't about selling music. It's about making music. I got so used to those two being inseparable that it took a lot of psychological work to divorce the processes.
She says her supporters "haven't just promised; they've put down their credit card." And Neil Gaiman, her husband, also strongly endorses the freedom to experiment. "If, as an artist, you ever listen to your fans' demands, and their demands are always insisting you make the last thing they liked again, you would go nowhere."
She says her supporters "haven't just promised; they've put down their credit card." And Neil Gaiman, her husband, also strongly endorses the freedom to experiment. "If, as an artist, you ever listen to your fans' demands, and their demands are always insisting you make the last thing they liked again, you would go nowhere."
Not having financial worries kinda helps with the whole escaping the music industry thing.
Funny that they keep going back to Amanda Palmer for these stories, when the real pioneers in crowd-funded music is Marillion, who started doing it way back in 1996 for tours, and 2001 for albums. If you have a big enough fan base, you can probably can do something like this.
She spoke at a TED talk recently and she's for the free sharing of digital content.
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Wait. No. Could it be that being married to a rich famous person means you don't have to worry shit about money, and can do stuff you like anyway?
Look, Neil was successful before he married Amanda. It's not her income that lets him experiment, he makes his own contribution.
What the fuck makes you think she's living off his money? She was a successful artist filling concert halls on international tours before she even met Neil.
Fixed
At this stage, you, me, and Editor David are about the only people who HAVEN'T given a TED talk, and mine's booked for late October...
> Last TED talk I saw was by a professional pickpocketer.
The last Kickstarter project I saw was was by a professional pickpocketer.
Come to think of it, most of them are!
Well, your argument depends on chronology. Palmer had her first record out years before she met Gaiman, and that was after she had directed her first play and had developed a local cult following. Gaiman was actually a fan before he was introduced to her.
Which is not to say there aren't rich dilettante women making a "career" out of spending their husbands' fortunes, but to fit Palmer into that mold you have to throw out the facts.
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Way back near the end of his Sandman run, Neil Gaiman showed us what he thought of us fans with "Nybbas the Spider". He may have thought this was a cute bit of nose-thumbing at us obnoxious fanboys or some-such, but me, I concluded he was in over his head and had no idea what to do with the vein of material he had been mining, and I pretty much ignored him ever since [1]. Far be it from me to deny him his freedom to experiment, but why would I bother with those experiments compared to the millions of others out there in the world?
Amanda Palmer has done an excellent job of showing the potential for crowd-funding, provided you happen to be a pretty young woman who's weirdly extroverted and enjoys telling heart-warming, personal stories to an audience of thousands of people.
[1] Actually, there was a movie with a Gaiman script out some years back that I actually went to see, because it also had Dave McKean artwork... I remember thinking "Well, Dave McKean held up his end.".