Re: I need to lie down somewhere...
It does rather make one's head spin, doesn't it?
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 …
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Friday 14th September 2012 15:08 GMT Velv
Re: I need to lie down somewhere...
So I wouldn't go as far as say I actually agree with the article (there isn't really any opinion to agree or disagree with) - I just couldn't find anything fundamentally wrong with the article.
(beer icon - Orlowski can pay for good comments with "beer" - mines a Cider, and I'll be in the Haymarket Bar, Edinburgh from about 5:30)
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Friday 14th September 2012 15:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I need to lie down somewhere...
> This is the first Orlowski article I've actually agreed with.
Indeed. If there's one thing that musicians really *should* be able to make some money from, it is live concerts.
How you can sell out at venues and still make a pittance is quite honestly a mystery to me.
I realise that concerts are expensive to put on, but one of the major costs are people. If you're not paying the people, then where is all the money going?
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Friday 14th September 2012 19:40 GMT Law
Re: I need to lie down somewhere...
"This is the first Orlowski article I've actually agreed with."
Usually I can tell it's an Orlowski article from the tone at the outset - but I didn't even know it was him until I read the final bit that said:
"Now we know what their vision of the future looks like. It's one where wealth never trickles down..."
So one artist (who I actually like btw - I have several Dresden Dolls albums and her solo stuff) turns out to be a bit of a douche and tries to trick musicians into supporting her for free - that doesn't equate to this particular scam she has pulled to being the model the anti-big-label gang are endorsing. Seems like a very odd thing to pull from all this.
She's also more likely well know than Neil Gaiman... so to name her as an anonymous wife in the title is a bit of an odd thing to do too. Having said that, thanks for pointing out what she's trying to do - because if I didn't know she was this big a douche I may have bought the next album in support.
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Saturday 15th September 2012 04:34 GMT h4rm0ny
Re: @Law I need to lie down somewhere...
I'm very familiar with the Dresden Dolls and knew who Amanda Palmer is. I had no idea she was married to Neil Gaiman who I am vaguely aware of as a comic book artist.
Shame on El Reg. for referring to an established and successful female artist as "the wife of..."
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Monday 17th September 2012 14:25 GMT Pat 4
Re: @Law I need to lie down somewhere...
"I am vaguely aware of as a comic book artist."
ehhhh.... And Nebula award winner, and Hugo award winner, and NY Times bestseller, and television writer, and had major films adapted from his books...
No?
Never heard of Stardust? Coraline? American Gods? No?
Amanda who???
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Tuesday 18th September 2012 10:31 GMT Graham Bartlett
Re: @Law I need to lie down somewhere...
"Established and successful"...?
Never heard of the Dresden Dolls myself. Googling them, I see they managed two studio albums and one live album in a decade, and their act is *very* niche. They certainly haven't troubled public awareness to any great extent. And she's *so* successful that she can't afford to pay musicians on her tours...?
Neil Gaiman OTOH has been writing for over 20 years, and doing *very* well out of it. The "Sandman" comics were somewhat niche, sure. But his first novel "Good Omens" with Terry Pratchett did very well, and "Anansi Boys" went straight in at number one. He's won all sorts of awards. "Neverwhere" was a BBC series back in the 90s, before he adapted his own screenplay to a book. "Stardust" and "Coraline" have been filmed. He wrote the CGI film "Beowulf" a few years back (the Sean Bean/Angelina Jolie one).
So compare niche cabaret act with number one NYT bestseller author. Yep, "wife of" is about the shape of it.
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Saturday 15th September 2012 19:36 GMT Law
Re: @Law I need to lie down somewhere...
I've not really seen much from Gaiman since the early 1990s - but I'd wager el-reg's audience is just as likely to include listeners of "current" music than graphic novel writers, if not more likely so.
My point about it was I just think it's needlessly insulting - the article has bugger all to do with the husband, yet he gets the title and she didn't even get named in the sub title.
Anyway - bugger it, it's the weekend and I need a drink! :)
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Monday 17th September 2012 09:32 GMT Jedit
"She's also more likely well know than Neil Gaiman"
No, she's not. Gaiman has written for Doctor Who and several of his own books have been adapted for the screen; his global audience numbers in the millions.
Amanda Palmer should be ashamed. Compare what she's done to what Thea Gilmore did when someone in her £52-a-year subscription fanclub commented that she wasn't delivering any of what she'd promised apart from the private forum and the monthly exclusive song. Thea agreed, apologised, ditched subscription fees until she figured out how to get it all working again, and has carried on giving existing members forum access and the monthly song for free in the interim. I can't imagine that Palmer isn't in a position to make this comparison, either, as Neil Gaiman is one of Thea's fanclub members.
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Friday 14th September 2012 19:49 GMT Graham Dawson
Re: I need to lie down somewhere...
I was with it up to the last line, when the hyperbole broke down into the fallacy of guilt by association. The fact that she's a grasping greedy little snit doesn't mean the people that she used for promotional purposes agree with that stance. In fact I'd suggest rather the opposite.
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Friday 14th September 2012 14:10 GMT jaywin
Re: From the horses mouth
Wow... I suppose you could sumarise that response by "Amy, you just don't get it. Go away."
It's the little revelations in there, like how it's fine for her to do this because 'Beiber's fans would jump at the chance of supporting him', or 'David Byrne' once spent a few hours doing vocals with me', which shows how out of touch she is with peoples concerns. Like David Byrne is going to struggle to pay the rent by doing something for free for a few hours, and he'll probably get some good exposure to a different market by doing this, it's not like she's planning to introduce the all the supporting artists on stage.
But it's the 'for the big important shows, we've decided we have to pay people to do this, so we've contacted some professionals' that blows her entire standpoint out of the water. She needs these musicians, without them her show isn't going to work, and she acknowledges that she's going to have to pay for this on the big shows, but she just doesn't get how this is exactly the devalument that was discussed by Amy in the post which kicked this all off.
Sorry Amanda, it's you who doesn't get it. Now go away.
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Saturday 15th September 2012 19:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: From the horses mouth
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Friday 14th September 2012 13:40 GMT geejayoh
The beginning of the end?
People have been saying for a while that it's only going to take one moron to duck with kick starter crowd source darlings before the trust bubble is best and confidence in the platform and method breaks.there was a brief scandal a couple of weeks ago. But this is wholly different, with mismanagement and hypocrisy at the firing.
I feel it is a bit harsh to judge boingboing here, as they were probably trusting her to not act like an idiot and betray that trust. You could label it foolish to trust someone asking for so much for what is essentially a vanity project, but there you go. No one forces people to donate.
It does make me wonder if kick starter has any protectionor contingencies in place against morally outrageous user of funds raised, or if there ought to be some other form of recourse for people who feel let down.
But one thing for sure. 35k is a small percentage of that total to save so you can get the best for what I would imagine is a fairly crucial part of the project and critical to its success. I guess exposure was more important to this clown than actually giving punters what they want (an awesome live show). Oh well.
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Monday 17th September 2012 09:41 GMT Jedit
"Absolute nonsense. It's the other way around"
Janis Ian, who has been recording for over 40 years and hence knows more about it than you, has stated that she's never received a royalty statement from a record company that didn't say she owed them money and that she makes all her income from touring.
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Sunday 16th September 2012 22:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Fitzgerald was right, Hemingway was wrong...
All that financial security doesn't seem to stop them getting their snouts into more and bigger troughs.
Although, strangely, many seem to think the rest of us need to be starved and threatened into doing anything, or we will be 'too comfortable' to bother.
Perhaps they are too far up themselves to question their own sense of entitlement?
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Friday 14th September 2012 19:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Where did the money go
The studio time will probably have swallowed most of it, directly or indirectly.
Presumably she hired a proper studio and some professional musicians and then spent months there, working at the pace bands used to in such big expensive studios back in the 80s when profit margins were high.
On top of that, factor in all the money spent sending the tea boy out for food, drinks and whatever else took their fancy whilst watching TV inbetween takes (which can be several hours in my experience). Don't forget travel costs.
Promotional material will have swallowed the rest of it, unless she did it all herself in a pirated copy of Quark and had it printed in Walmart. Having an agency do it all will have cost tens of thousands if not over a hundred.
And people like this tend to give work to their friends (real or strategic) so that they can share the money around and earn brownie points & favours.
There's also things that had to be bought for the project... like a particular piece of equipment the studio didn't have, a nice new MacBook Pro, an iPad, a faster home broadband connection to send large audio files to and from the studio, etc.
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Sunday 16th September 2012 11:24 GMT Richard 12
Very interesting
Given that she says throughout that her sums are based on a backing of $1,000,000, and she actually raised $192,793 more than that.
Last time I checked, $35k was less than $192k, and she'd still have $157k more than budgeted.
Unless of course the budget was simply wrong. However being out by more than $150k is pretty serious, enough to bankrupt many companies.
The odd thing is that she acknowledges that the designers and crew aren't going to work for free, yet she expects the musicians to do that.
I suppose the weirdest part is that it's usually the other way around in the UK.
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Friday 14th September 2012 15:09 GMT philsuth
Enough snark already
What's the problem here? Remember, no-one's forcing musicians to do anything. Those who don't wish to perform with Amanda, or feel they'd be being ripped off, are free to stay away in droves. 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. Rewards can come in many flavours.
It's also worth remembering that the $1M+ raised by the Kickstarter was not pure profit. An awful lot of music production, CD and other merch manufacturing, packing, shipping etc had to come out of that bucket. There's undoubtedly some profit in there, but certainly not a gravy train of the proportions alluded to above.
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Friday 14th September 2012 19:40 GMT Windrose
Re: Enough snark already
"What's the problem here?"
Try applying the former part of your argument ("... Rewards can come in many flavours") to the latter part ("An awful lot of music production, CD and other merch manufacturing, packing, shipping etc... ").
How many manufacturers, packers, shippers, and so forth do YOU believe would volunteer their time and materials to get "valuable exposure"? If she, or anyone else, expect profession X to donate time, effort and material (yes, instruments get worn), then surely professions Y and Z should do the same!
No? There's the problem. The supporting musicians, who will get far less exposure than Ms. Palmer, can't pay their foodbills with differently flavoured rewards. I'm sure SOME can, and some probably will, but it's the assumption that they SHOULD which grates 'pon many.
Us of the all-should-be-free generation doesn't pay a living wage to most of the artists who entertain us as it is.
No surprise, really, that some of them get a little cranky when one of their own make the same assumption.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
