Marvellously beautiful TED talk

  On 4/2/2013 at 5:20 PM, chenGOD said:

meanwhile plenty of punk bands toured across north america on shoestring budgets playing shitty venues sleeping in shitty motels and eating mcdonalds.

fuck this. i have no issues with musicians EARNING a living off their music but seriously...

 

i love the albini quote about her being less competent than GG Allin

if you put the her genuineness issue aside, doesn't it actually make her much more competent in strictly economic terms in the end ? she gathered 1.2 mil rather effortlessly and doesn't have to sleep in crappy motels and eat mcdonalds.

  On 4/2/2013 at 6:25 PM, eugene said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 5:20 PM, chenGOD said:

meanwhile plenty of punk bands toured across north america on shoestring budgets playing shitty venues sleeping in shitty motels and eating mcdonalds.

fuck this. i have no issues with musicians EARNING a living off their music but seriously...

 

i love the albini quote about her being less competent than GG Allin

 

if you put the her genuineness issue aside, doesn't it actually make her much more competent in strictly economic terms in the end ? she gathered 1.2 mil rather effortlessly and doesn't have to sleep in crappy motels and eat mcdonalds.

no, it means that she has a lot of fans that are willing to give her money.

you can do exactly the same as her, and you wouldn't get the same amount of money.

being well aware of your situation is a major part of "being competent"

  On 4/2/2013 at 6:41 PM, eugene said:

being well aware of your situation is a major part of "being competent"

so what you're really trying to say is that Amanda Palmer has become adept at exploiting her fans, as well as covering up this exploitation with smarmy blog posts / Facebook posts / TED wankings?

Ah yes.

how is it exploitative? did any of you even watch the talk?

why does it necessarily amount to exploitation ? she's been active for more than a decade, she's relatively well known in her circles and believes she can gather enough money for an album+tour+whatever in much more pleasant and idealistic ways instead of turning to exploitative record labels and that whole biz.

  On 4/2/2013 at 6:50 PM, luke viia said:

how is it exploitative? did any of you even watch the talk?

because she didn't need to release the music in this way?

wait, isn't one of the main reasons record labels are exploitative is bc they don't pay artists? the fuck is going on here?

I have "pay what you want" albums online. Am I exploiting people's generosity?

  On 4/2/2013 at 7:00 PM, luke viia said:

I have "pay what you want" albums online. Am I exploiting people's generosity?

no, because that's completely different. and I'm surprised that you don't see why it's completely different.

  On 4/2/2013 at 6:59 PM, Alcofribas said:

wait, isn't one of the main reasons record labels are exploitative is bc they don't pay artists? the fuck is going on here?

yeah, and albini himself wrote a famous article about it called "The Problem With Music." He also took back his statement about Palmer being an idiot and threw in his support for systems like Kickstarter. He just thought that the way she used the money was "inefficient" and I'd agree, but it's not like she actually scammed anyone. They're donations for goodness sake. This website runs on the same idea.

  On 4/2/2013 at 7:01 PM, oscillik said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 7:00 PM, luke viia said:

I have "pay what you want" albums online. Am I exploiting people's generosity?

no, because that's completely different. and I'm surprised that you don't see why it's completely different.

Just explain how it's exploitation please. I don't really want to post too many more times in this thread. =P

I'm just surprised to see people on a music forum not taking issue with a musician raising a million dollars with which she pays lawyers and managers but has musicians working for her for free. just pay the musicians ffs. She even mentioned pocketing 100k wtf

edit: i have no prob with how the money was raised.

One last post before I fuck off, because I don't even like Amanda Palmer that much but there are some strange ideas floating in this thread:

She asked for "professional-ish horn and string players" to volunteer to play a few songs in their sets when they were in town. The word is "volunteering." The musicians were to come to a small rehearsal beforehand, learn the songs, then get up on stage during the set and perform with them for a few tunes, and they would get paid in beer and a nice time. People (friends, fans) volunteered. The internet and "professional musicians" rose a stink. Palmer decided to pay the musicians, even the ones who had already volunteered, retroactively, by shifting some costs around from the way it was organized on her money-breakdown blog post. That's it.

And yeah I do agree that her use of the money was inefficient and paying a lawyer (sorry baph) to help me be legally creative has never appealed to me personally. but whatever. *rollerskates outta here*

it's not really "musicians working for free", more like an invitation for fans who can play instruments to join her on stage and jam about, from what i understood, she still has her band who gets paid properly.

anyways, we're basically discussing outdated info here as she does pay those fans anyway: http://pitchfork.com/news/47917-amanda-palmer-starts-paying-musicians/

  On 4/2/2013 at 7:05 PM, Alcofribas said:

I'm just surprised to see people on a music forum not taking issue with a musician raising a million dollars with which she pays lawyers and managers but has musicians working for her for free. just pay the musicians ffs. She even mentioned pocketing 100k wtf

 

edit: i have no prob with how the money was raised.

That's what irked me too. Actually I'm more perplexed than anything. She's not exploiting anyone, I have no problem with kickstarter either - it's clear she has many fans and a sincere relationship with them. Asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay debts and lawyer/management fees is just absurd when juxtaposed to her perpetually self-touted "look at me, I'm a humble eyebrow-less quasi-circus post-vaudeville or whatever-the-fuck troubadour who sleeps on couches" image. It's hard not to dismiss her with that in mind.

  On 4/2/2013 at 7:25 PM, joshuatx said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 7:05 PM, Alcofribas said:

I'm just surprised to see people on a music forum not taking issue with a musician raising a million dollars with which she pays lawyers and managers but has musicians working for her for free. just pay the musicians ffs. She even mentioned pocketing 100k wtf

 

edit: i have no prob with how the money was raised.

 

That's what irked me too. Actually I'm more perplexed than anything. She's not exploiting anyone, I have no problem with kickstarter either - it's clear she has many fans and a sincere relationship with them. Asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay debts and lawyer/management fees is just absurd when juxtaposed to her perpetually self-touted "look at me, I'm a humble eyebrow-less quasi-circus post-vaudeville or whatever-the-fuck troubadour who sleeps on couches" image. It's hard not to dismiss her with that in mind.

pretty much this - it's not exploitative - and I never said it was. It's just kind of shitty, especially considering her background.

Man alive her music sucks shit

She really played the victim well, "oh look at me im a very talented artistis doing REAL music, i'm not a millionaire blah blah big record companies blah blah feel sorry for me"

Do you think apocalypse hoboken are whining and begging for people to make them millionaire? no they suck it up and realise that under produced punk music doesnt appeal to enough people to make them rich.

Musicians should stop expecting to be millionaires, some of them have this attitude like they deserve money. Just make your god damn music and if people like it you'l make money off it, stop acting like you are a victim or some sort of injustice maybe your music sucks, ever think about that?

But yeah good for her, i'm glad she was able to scam 17,000 people, i wish my soul was as black as her, maybe i would have a million dollars right now.

i really dislike the idea that anyone deserves to make a living from art. how entitled.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do,31742/

  On 4/2/2013 at 11:57 PM, zaphod said:

i really dislike the idea that anyone deserves to make a living from art. how entitled.

Where was that said?

  On 4/2/2013 at 11:56 PM, Deer said:

She really played the victim well, "oh look at me im a very talented artistis doing REAL music, i'm not a millionaire blah blah big record companies blah blah feel sorry for me"

 

Do you think apocalypse hoboken are whining and begging for people to make them millionaire? no they suck it up and realise that under produced punk music doesnt appeal to enough people to make them rich.

 

Musicians should stop expecting to be millionaires, some of them have this attitude like they deserve money. Just make your god damn music and if people like it you'l make money off it, stop acting like you are a victim or some sort of injustice maybe your music sucks, ever think about that?

 

But yeah good for her, i'm glad she was able to scam 17,000 people, i wish my soul was as black as her, maybe i would have a million dollars right now.

it doesn't seem to me that she has any of the features you ascribe to her judging by posts in her blog and ted talk.

her music doesn't appeal to many people as well, those 1.2mil are donations from just about 25k people, she has a 100k $ cut for at least several months-year (?) activity (if you trust her breakdown). platforms like kickstarter are the best way to see whether people genuinely like you enough, and it worked for her, so how is it scamming exactly ?

  On 4/3/2013 at 12:38 AM, eugene said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 11:56 PM, Deer said:

She really played the victim well, "oh look at me im a very talented artistis doing REAL music, i'm not a millionaire blah blah big record companies blah blah feel sorry for me"

 

Do you think apocalypse hoboken are whining and begging for people to make them millionaire? no they suck it up and realise that under produced punk music doesnt appeal to enough people to make them rich.

 

Musicians should stop expecting to be millionaires, some of them have this attitude like they deserve money. Just make your god damn music and if people like it you'l make money off it, stop acting like you are a victim or some sort of injustice maybe your music sucks, ever think about that?

 

But yeah good for her, i'm glad she was able to scam 17,000 people, i wish my soul was as black as her, maybe i would have a million dollars right now.

 

it doesn't seem to me that she has any of the features you ascribe to her judging by posts in her blog and ted talk.

her music doesn't appeal to many people as well, those 1.2mil are donations from just about 25k people, she has a 100k $ cut for at least several months-year (?) activity (if you trust her breakdown). platforms like kickstarter are the best way to see whether people genuinely like you enough, and it worked for her, so how is it scamming exactly ?

Yeah, I'm having a hard time seeing how this woman is the demon many of you are framing her as.

  On 4/3/2013 at 12:59 AM, usagi said:

 

  On 4/2/2013 at 1:34 PM, Al Hounos said:

why eyebrows

 

whybrows

 

they really bug me. she looks like she's constantly leering and scheming (which doesn't help her argument!).

lol

Guys guys guys. Sorry I got to this thread late. It's an issue dear to my heart and I have things to say.

1) It's madness to decry her success on a site like this, which champions smaller/indie artists. She's finding (key word: it's a process) a new way to make a decent living as a musician. Anybody who thinks being poor is an OK part of being a musician hates music. I'm sorry, but it's true. It's romantic to think of art removed from money, but it's impractical. If you like music, you should be part of a world that gets musicians paid, and you should be especially OK when someone makes a lot of money from it.

2) Not only did she start paying the local "volunteer" musicians who play with her at her shows, she back-paid EVERYONE she had played with on this tour retroactively. So that's a non-issue. (You can read her blog about this here: http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20120919/ )

3) When the fuck is it going to become unacceptable to judge a woman's (or ANYONE'S) efforts based on her appearance? You think she looks like a dude. You don't like her eyebrows. So no one should give her a million dollars. Grow up. Also, as a forum of iconoclasts, you should be psyched when someone counterculture succeeds in a big, non-mainstream way.

4) Someone explain to me how doing a Kickstarter is exploitative. There are about 1,000,000,000 Kickstarters I haven't given to and I don't give a fuck. I support stuff when I actually want the incentive involved, 100% voluntarily. Kind of like a store, only you're pre-funding the product.

Ok love you all bye!