Why Amanda Palmer Left the Music 'Industry' For Crowdfunding (digitaltrends.com) 105
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."
Also helps having a super famous writer husband (Score:3, Insightful)
Not having financial worries kinda helps with the whole escaping the music industry thing.
Re:Also helps having a super famous writer husband (Score:5, Informative)
Regardless of who her husband is, she achieved a degree of commercial success prior to this change, which means that she has managed to build enough audience to make transitioning to crowdfunding easier. Obviously being a signed act isn't the only way to build that audience, but it certainly has its advantages.
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She was married to PGA Tour pro Arnold Palmer...
False. I could link to wikipedia, but seriously, if you feel the need to look it up yourself, that is easy enough.
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I've seen plenty of people type shit on
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> She was married to PGA Tour pro Arnold Palmer
She was better when she was performing with Stuart Emerson and Ricki Lake.
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Regardless of who her husband is, she achieved a degree of commercial success prior to this change, which means that she has managed to build enough audience to make transitioning to crowdfunding easier. Obviously being a signed act isn't the only way to build that audience, but it certainly has its advantages.
I'm not sure how much success constitutes a "degree" to you, but I've never heard of her any my tastes in music range pretty far and wide. And as for ease of transitioning to crowdfunding...if she's terrible and can't keep a record deal, then trading on the coattails of her husband in a crowdfunding model (instead of having to demonstrate her own talents to a record company) would be a lot easier, indeed.
Re:Also helps having a super famous writer husband (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't possibly believe that there are no successful artists that you haven't heard of.
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There are thousands of artists I never have heard of. ... nor do I care. ... and perhaps I stumble over music
Amanda Palma, I only know the name, for one particular reason: a female student in my Aikido Dojo has a crush on her. And she told me about her because I was talking about 'American Gods', a book of Neil.
Actually I don't know how she looks like (neither do I know about Neil, nor can I remember his surname (Stevenson?) ), I don't know what kind of music she makes
But I likely continue to by Neils books
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Thanks once again for reaffirming that your lack of knowledge on a given topic will not stop you from commenting. Keep up the good work!
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> I don't know what kind of music she makes ... nor do I care.
I'm going to inform you anyway.
If you want a Top40 reference, she is the lead singer of the Dresden Dolls.
>don't know who Dresden Dolls are
Unless you listen to only jazz and classical, I can't believe you got through the Oughts without hearing them.
Coin Operated Boy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
But then maybe you prefer something older:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
--
BMO
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Considering my tastes, I can honestly tell you I had no clue who this was. I want to say I've heard of the Dresden Dolls, but I'd be lying. Goo Goo Dolls, certainly, After clicking your oh so helpful link, I can say I understand why, I'd rather be rickrolled.
The only reason I even looked into this topic was because I was curious why someone I'd never even heard an inkling of was generating a front-page story. I guess we know who David likes.
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Actually I don't listen to music anymore since years. ...
Unless a band plays in my favourite pub
Jazz is one of my preferred forms, yes.
My CDs I gave to my father and my iTunes music I probably should delete, did not listen to any song since ages.
Dresden Dolls, I heard about when I googled her name yesterday. She indeed has a strange idea about eye brows :D
First song is funny, second one can not be played in Germany ... one of the reasons why I no longer bother with "music from the industry".
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She is obviously exploiting her marriage to someone I have never heard of. Working with Edward Ka-Spel it far more notable.
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On a geek site, you lose cred for not knowing who Neil Gaiman is.
For the world at large, "Neil Who?" should probably be expected from probably >99% of people you survey. He's not exactly a household name.
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I took an informal poll at my workplace this morning. Zero out of ten people have heard of Neil Gaiman. I'll ask ten more and if even one person recognizes the name, I'll be willing to concede that he's "relatively well known." :)
P.S. I'm in Minnesota, so theoretically his name recognition should be marginally higher here!
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And she's exactly what you'd imagine Neil Gaiman's wife to be. The argument that people are "only" interested in her because she's married to Gaiman is kind of self-defeating.
The argument that she is not really "successful" depends on your definition of "successful". Knowledge of Taylor Swift is compulsory in our culture, and it's true that if that is your benchmark for "success" Palmer has never been successful, even with marrying Gaiman. But before she met Gaiman she had a cult following and was able t
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>> For some people success is being able to do what they want.
No question. And it is so, so much easier to do what you want when you are married to a very wealthy spouse. The suburbs around NYC are jam-packed with galleries and concert venues featuring the artwork and "one woman shows" created by happy, "successful" artists who are enabled to do what they want by virtue of the size of their spouse's paycheck.
Re:Who the fuck is Amanda Palmer?? (Score:4, Informative)
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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Knowledge of Taylor Swift is compulsory in our culture, and it's true that if that is your benchmark for "success" Palmer has never been successful, even with marrying Gaiman.
I don't know much at all about Taylor Swift. I hear her mentioned from time to time, but I wouldn't recognize it as Taylor Swift singing a song if I heard it.
Gaiman I remember because I was buying the Sandman comix when they came out. In fact, buying them at Dreamhaven in Minneapolis, the town that he ended up emigrating to. I have not been that impressed with his post-Sandman work, though he is a gifted and important artist. He strip-mines folklore and re-interprets it for a modern audience of people w
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Who is "Taylor Swift"? Is he a musician?
Yes, I am joking ;). Though I would like to say that I enjoy listening to The Dresden Dolls, which makes them, for me, more of a success than Swift-y, and helps prove your point.
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Re:Who? (Score:4, Informative)
She spoke at a TED talk [ted.com] recently and she's for the free sharing of digital content.
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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.
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Cite?
I've seen her filling nothing more than an a club.
While her band by itself probably hasn't, when The Dresden Dolls opened for Nine Inch Nails during the With Teeth tour they were playing huge venues. They had a pretty big following during the mid-2000s.
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You've got to discriminate between TED talks and TEDx talks.
TED talks are usually insightful information imparted by a noted expert in their field.
I did. He was a very good pickpocketer. Can't say I've ever seen a TEDx talk.
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> 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!
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I can see why google search results wouldn't necessarily convey a lot of why her fans love her, and her musical output is so broad that it's easy to find things you're not impressed by.
I've been to see her perform twice and I find her a fascinating person and artist.
A lot of the stuff she produces doesn't work for me but she's always entertaining, has stupendous audience engagement and I love her strong independence.
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I disagree with the notion that a strong, independent woman needs to tattoo (what looks like) barbed wire eyebrow replacements as her statement of that putative strong independence.
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I disagree with the notion that a strong, independent woman needs to tattoo (what looks like) barbed wire eyebrow replacements as her statement of that putative strong independence.
Hey! She has every right to make herself look stupid and trashy. Not knowing who she was, I did a web search. BWAHAHAHA! It ain't cool if people laugh at what you think is cool, Amanda.
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She has every right to blah blah blah
Point to where I said that she did not have the right to do that.
Better yet... explain how in your pea-fucking left-wing shit-head brain that "I disagree with" morphs into "she has no right to".
Asshole.
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She has every right to blah blah blah
Point to where I said that she did not have the right to do that.
You said nothing pf the sort. Tell me honey, are you this utterly sensitive in real life? Have such insecurity when someone makes a simple statement that you immediately jump to an unwarranted and completly wrong conclusion that I am insulting you or even disagreeing with you?
Better yet... explain how in your pea-fucking left-wing shit-head brain that "I disagree with" morphs into "she has no right to".
Asshole.
You take a simple reply the first part of which I simply make a statement about people who get tattoos, the second part which was agreeing with you in different words and turn it into such a massive insult to you, such an impugnment u
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Those aren't tattoos, they're just make-up.
I think it's less a statement of independence and more just something she's been doing since she was 22 and has turned into a pseudo-trademark. Amanda with hairy eyebrows would not be AFP.
Marillion was first (Score:5, Informative)
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Marillion still existed in 1996? I thought they did four albums and disappeared in the 1980s.
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I suppose one of them was a concept album inspired by the Matrix sequels?
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Nothing funny about it. She just released an album, so the music press wants to interview her about it. Marillion's last album is long past the interview cycle, so the press isn't chasing them for interviews.
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I wonder how they have been taken over by lawyers (Score:2)
I wonder how Hollywood and the music industry have been taken over by lawyers in the first place.
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Just like cpl. Hicks has a nice solution for all systemd, Oracle, Microsoft and Apple problems, in this case let's listen to The Bard.
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At least he didn't put [sic] after it, which seems to be a growing trend. Fortunately, it isn't growing in a literally exponential way.
Because music isn't always made in a factory (Score:2)
Is music always produced in a factory and delivered to "consumers"? If not, "industry" might not be the ideal term [gnu.org].
How is this news for nerds??? (Score:1)
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Be careful, Amanda Palmer (Score:4, Funny)
Your cousin Laura tried walking her own path, and ended up wrapped in plastic.
The Exploitative Amanda Palmer??? (Score:1)
The one who wanted people to work for nothing?
http://kotaku.com/5943112/amanda-palmer-asks-musicians-to-play-for-free-pisses-off-musicians
Moderation errors (Score:3)
Fixed
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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 oth
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it probably doesn't hurt that she married the most famous author on earth
Since when did J. K. Rowling get gay married?
#Badda Badda BADDA badda# (Score:2)
Hey, it worked for Status Quo.
Re:Either crowdfund, or be married to a rich dude (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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