Work for beer, Neil Gaiman's wife tells musicians Amanda Palmer, the artist who raised $1.2m from her fans on Kickstarter to fund a new record and tour, is now asking classical musicians to work for her for free. The money has been on lavished on studio time, a luxury booklet, and an abundance of expensive promotional material. But there's nothing left for the classical …
> An awful lot of music production, CD and other merch manufacturing, packing, shipping
What? You mean they're giving all that stuff away for free?
That's weird because usually they charge a wad for all merchandise at those gigs, including the programmes and any CDs. If fact, a great deal of the profit from concerts is typically made from the sale of merchandise. It certainly shouldn't be a big loss for them.
. <- the point
| <- you
You are correct insofar as you have identified the very obvious point that musicians are free to stay away in droves. They are also free, as it turns out, to castigate Amanda for raising a ton of money for her tour and then demanding that they work for beer. Their reward, as you would have it, is to bet their time and training on an "increasingly high-profile act" (who no one has heard of and whose main qualification appears to be having a famous husband) doing well enough that they get some sort of reputational boost as a result of playing with her, when what they need is rent money right now.
I'm not a betting man, but if I were, I'd bet on Amanda fading into even greater obscurity, so working for her for free on the hopes of future employment seems a foolish choice.
You're suggesting a big proponent of the brave new music industry spent all the money on pressing and shipping CDs? The irony is laid on thick in this story.
Overall though I'm glad to see Ms Palmer adopting the dot-com model of spending the VCs money, keeping what's left for yourself while not paying the staff. Perhaps she should offer the musicians stock options, then try to persuade Goldman Sachs to take her public before the inevitable bankruptcy and subsequent memoirs. It's not cynical if it's true.
The "problem" is that you'd, well not YOU per se, but most people would expect her to have maybe just a little empathy and some kind of feeling of solidarity - however weak and attenuated - with other musicians, and here she is trying to enlist people who are basically scabs and strikebreakers, really.
As for how much of the $1.2M is "profit": your arithmetic is way off: it was ALL profit. SHE got it and SHE decided what she wanted to spend it on, and she spent it all on herself. Her PROFIT, in other words, is the album and the tour. Along with the chance to enlist any gullible musicians who are willing to work for "exposure"... as opposed to something that can actually "pay the rent" or "fund health insurance" or help with whatever other trivial concerns that they might have and which Amanda Palmer doesn't ..
> Those who are keen to have some fun playing music with an increasingly high-profile act, and gain in the
> process valuable exposure to an evidently supportive and music loving fan-base, are also free to do so.
How exactly are these musicians she recruits going to benefit? Has she offered to introduce them all and who they are to her audiences? Has she offered to link to their profiles from her website? Has she offered to do a write up on her site about them? As far as I can tell, no.
So how exactly are these people getting exposure to the supportive and music loving fan base, if none of them have a clue who they are?
I think the problems are these:
1/ People paid her a LOT of money to produce the music. Then they're likely to be paying again between seeing the show and buying the merchandise. Yet despite having paid once/twice/more already, they're still getting absolutely no guarantee of quality. Maybe one city will have rubbish volunteers. Or nobody will turn up to volunteer at all.
2/ She clearly can afford to pay for this. She used $250k of the money to pay off her personal debts, admitted there was over $100k left in slush before charging anything for the concerts, and the events themselves - if sold out (as is allegedly often the case) - will also generate money.
3/ She's admitting that "unpaid" isn't as good as "paid" by then spending money in certain big cities where there are more likely to be critics and the like. Why the differentiated treatment of fans?
4/ This devalues professional musicians dangerously. If you look at most not-for-profit / volunteering schemes, they're usually very careful around not doing things that would see people who would otherwise have earned an income out of pocket. As someone who's been a struggling musician herself, she should realise that this is damaging to those on the bottom rungs of the ladder. Not least when she's not even promised to give them any promotion - publishing who they are, what they do, links to their work, etc.. Also, there's using volunteers to do something for charity as a whole, and there's asking people to work for you for free so you can line your own pockets. Again, there are generally a lot of codes-of-practice around this that are generally accepted as being "good things".
5/ The fans have spoken. There's been a huge amount of feedback to her - including from people who've opened for her and played with her in the past, and those who contributed to Kickstarter - stating that this isn't acceptable behaviour. She's ignoring this rather than addressing it, despite continually claims of how in touch with her fanbase she is and how she's "one of them".
6/ She uses particularly inappropriate comparisons to try to justify her actions rather than just being far more open. Nowhere does she say 'sorry' to her fans - those who've made her career possible by *trusting* in her and paying in to Kickstarter. She should at the very least apologise that she didn't have the foresight to budget properly, and that now they goods/services they've pre-paid for may well be substandard as she's first and foremost funneled the money into paying off her own personal debt.
Paris, because she's never short of a string of volunteers with horns.
If she were giving these concerts for free, then few would complain about her also asking others to volunteer their time and talent. But she's making money, so asking others to go unpaid strikes many (me included) as an abuse of her status. Just because she can find plenty of people willing to be used doesn't make it less tacky.
Homeless guy to represent the unpaid musicians.
You might as well ask "what's the harm in opening a bar and asking for volunteer barmen?"
"You will be paid in free beer, hugs, merch, and the opportunity to chat up good looking young trendies while serving them a professionally-mixed cocktail."
What's wrong with that is that it cuts the bottom out of the market for bar staff, and it has rightly been rendered illegal by UK law (and probably EU law too), except when the bar in question is operating for a genuine community group or registered non-profit.
Which leads to the interesting possibility that the MU could take this muppet to court as a high-profile way of proving that the same labour laws that guarantee a (barely) living minimum wage apply to musicians as well as public lavatory cleaners.
Her response goes on about doing lots for free, because that's the way it's always been in showbusiness.
But that's the way it was in finance, law, etc too, with high profile employers exploiting unpaid workers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H "interns" with promises of experience, exposure, and the possibility of a paid job at a later date. The laws that stopped them doing that apply.
... but i would of thought that you get a band in place, then crew/gear, then venues AND THEN PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS.
sounds like she has got it ass about face thinking everyone would flock to be in the presence of someone so obviously talented as herself let alone play music with her for free!
i agree with the last quoted section, stupid, arrogant and greedy.
"The money has been on lavished on studio time, a luxury booklet, and an abundance of expensive promotional material."
I would hardly say lavished, studio time is pretty expensive, as is promotional material. As for a luxury booklet, I know that if I was contributing a few hundred dollars on Kickstarter, I would be pretty pissed off if my reward was a home burnt CD wrapped in a sheet of A4 paper with a few pictures printed on it with an inkjet and shoved in an envelope.
I say fair play to her.
The price of failure was over a million. It was all about shelling out from there.
A million could have hired a meeting hall to practice after the auditions and the residue spent on an opening night.
Then the money starts coming in all over again.
Spending money you haven't got is a crime. Spending money you have got, wastefully, can be classified as lavish.
Before you all rush to grab your matches, Gaiman has stated publicly that he is not a scientologist.
His parents are (were? I don't know if they're still alive) and his sisters are, it's possible that he was badgered into handing over some cash by them rather than doing it out of any actual belief.
It's personal choice of course but when a professional(ish) singer offers hugs & beer it would be better if it was for charity. Its not like amateur musicians are expensive.
If I could play, then given an opportunity of jamming with Springsteen or McCartney I like most would do it for free, this lady (what was her her name again?) seems to have over estimated her fame.
Her name's Amanda Palmer. Whether she's Neil Gaiman's wife doesn't factor into the decisions she makes as a musician or businesswoman. Why drag him into it, unless you're trying to make a scandal out of the fact that she's married to a man who may or may not be wealthy enough to pay for what she says isn't in her budget? That doesn't make any business or tax sense. Just because a wealthy person is near a person being quite open about their expenses doesn't mean that wealthy person is automatically responsible for the situation.
Also, the implication that as her husband his existence suddenly trumps putting even her own name in the title is pretty dang sexist.
"Whether she's Neil Gaiman's wife doesn't factor into the decisions she makes as a musician or businesswoman." (Well, for "musician" and "businesswoman" read "attention whore" and "con artist", for the sake of intelligibility.)
Of course the fact that she is married to Gaiman "factors in". Why exactly didn't her husband (worth, I have read, $20 million) fund this project? That's an interesting question, don't you think? How did it become preferable to put out a tin cup and panhandle on the internet instead of investing her own money? Do you really want to say that "Amanda Palmer the Attention Whore" and "Amanda Palmer The Wife Of A Man Worth $20 Million" have nothing to do with each other - or that neither of them have anything to do with her husband? You must be joking. What the fuck do people get married for in the first place, in your opinion? To pretend that they are complete strangers and have never heard of one another?
"Just because a wealthy person is near a person being quite open about their expenses doesn't mean that wealthy person is automatically responsible for the situation."
No one has said that Gaiman is "responsible" for "the situation" - but the fact that he could have financed the whole operation (or even cosigned a loan) but didn't, is telling - even if it tells *you* nothing.
But you know, I think that the whole Kickstarter campaign was primarily a publicity stunt. It really is difficult to believe that she actually *needed* to use Kickstarter. I think that Palmer, the grasping little pig, found herself, almost certainly via her husband's connections as illustrated at least partially by his membership in the "Open Rights Group", in the position of being able get herself a great deal of free publicity, and someone in her camp realized that a Kickstarter campaign could be used not only to nab some cash but also garner publicity in a way that simply funding the project with, let's say, a loan under her own name, cosigned by her husband, could not have - thereby satisfying, at the same time, both her greed, and her need for attention!
And the fact that she wants musicians to work without pay just makes it even more "Web 2.0" now doesn't it?
The one cynical abusers always employ. "Do this for free and you'll get a credit". "Do this for nothing and I'll pay double next time". "Do this for free for me and I'll recommend all my friends".
Anyone in any line of business soon learns that such promises are worth as much as the fee. And twice as much as the value placed on their services by their 'patron'.
I have read in several studies that it takes on average 7 years to master something. Professional musicians are business people that play music. If they aren't going to get paid, they will have to find other employment. It would be a hard shot to spend another 7 years mastering something else.
While it might be the chance of a lifetime to go on tour with a top name performer, if they asked for a qualified musician to work for free for several months while they collected all of the money from the shows, that would be a little disconcerting. You might get some good exposure from the "job", but you may also get known as the schmuck who worked for free on a high grossing tour. It is possible to spend $1,000,000 making an album and promo materials, but it's tough to do without taking a lot of drugs.
As she says in her lengthy response to this issue Amanda Palmer chooses to operate in a barter system.
She played a show for my friends last year in Canberra that was as much a party as a performance.
It never occurred to us to offer payment, and she didn't ask for any.
A good time had by all.
There is a slippery slope here but for someone who gives a lot back for free I think there are better targets to pick on than Amanda Palmer.
We're not talking huffpo levels of exploitation here.
My 2c.
1) She had $1.3 million; she should have factored in the costs of tours before spunking the dosh on velour CD sleeves and what have you.
2) Some of the musicians might be willing to work for living/transports costs and a share of the tour's gross. A band that is playing together for a while has got to be better than a bunch of folks who only met two days ago.
3) Some might even be willing to do it for the billing (those who a wanting to get out of some other career, perhaps).
But this just reads of desperate naivety and hoping that by embracing the new funding model it will somehow just all magic out her ass. Kickstarters etc are a great idea, but it still requires the person getting the money to have some clue about WTF they are doing.
And Mr. Orlowski, please stop writing articles like this. I can't be a good sign of my mental health if we are in agreement. :)
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