amanda "$1.2m" palmer wants you to play with her for free

[motorbike guy]

shes listing 20$ as the cost to make each LP. Fucking rediculous, is she going to the mob run factory?

plus she calls them "vinyls".

ick.

[subprime]

"

this is a long blog, but i have something important i’d love for you to read first.
save it for later if you have to, but READ IT. (a lot of you, especially the music-biz types, probably already have.)

it’s a now-famous piece of writing from the early 90’s by producer steve albini, entitled “The Problem With Music.”
in it, he basically explains why a famous touring band on a label is still fundamentally FUCKED once you do the math.

click HERE to read it."

this must be awkward

[154]

For someone taking such an anti-major label stance, her accounting skills are even worse.

[Wheely]

first i’ll pay off the lovely debt – stacks of bills and loans and the like – associated with readying all of the stuff that had to happen BEFORE i brought this project to kickstarter.
for the past 8 months or so, i wasn’t touring – and therefore wasn’t making much income – but every step of the way, there were expenses. so, during that time, i borrowed from various friends and family who i’d built up trust with over the years.

Also, you've helped her finance the 8 months prior to this project, when she was just, like, hanging out and borrowing from friends and family (sounds like her massively wealthy, famous husband isn't much help when it comes to living expenses.)

we had budgeted about $80k for four to five music videos

Punk rock, man.

[gonzochicago]

Now on....everywhere http://www.pitchfork.com/news/47845-steve-albini-slams-amanda-palmer-for-asking-fans-to-play-in-her-band-for-free/

I want a Palmer / Albini board fight.

[Auntie Ovipositor]

Sadly, Steve will lose this argument because tits. Everyone quotes him, then posts tits. Where's Betch when you need her?

[bleh.]

i'd like to point out that in the list above, she factors in payment for the designers and artists who helped out.

[lemur68]

Sadly, Steve will lose this argument because tits. Everyone quotes him, then posts tits. Where's Betch when you need her?

transmission of booty juice via the dizz-hole

[Adam Sr]

Sadly, Steve will lose this argument because tits. Everyone quotes him, then posts tits. Where's Betch when you need her?

Tits with Flaming Lips soundtrack means own goal, though. Draw.

[jayryan]

yeah, i was going to point out that this thread is a news source:

http://stereogum.com/1151562/steve-albi ... ereogum%29

[steve]

Well, since the new journalism is just re-posting what other people have lifted from message boards and twitter, there are probably going to be a hundred or so stories on the web with headlines like "Steve Albini calls Amanda Palmer an Idiot," so I'd better make my position on that clear. I don't think Amanda Palmer is an idiot, and it was rude and sloppy of me to make that impression. I'm sorry Amanda Palmer, the internet is going to tell you that I think you're an idiot, and while that's not true, it's my fault.

I Don't know Amanda Palmer, and don't recall ever hearing her music, though I hear a lot of music. Full disclosure, my wife Heather once tried to contact her through her agents to see if she would play at a charity event, but I don't know what happened with that other than nothing happened.

I have no problem with bands using participant financing schemes like Kickstarter and such. I've said many times that I think they're part of the new way bands and their audience interact and they can be a fantastic resource, enabling bands to do things essentially in cooperation with their audience. It's pretty amazing actually.

It should be obvious also that having gotten over a million dollars from such an effort that it is just plain rude to ask for further indulgences from your audience, like playing in your backing band for free.

Fuck's sake a million dollars is a shitload of money. How can you possibly not have a bunch laying around after people just gave you a million dollars? I saw a breakdown about where the money went a while ago, and most everything in it was absurdly inefficient, including paying people to take care of spending the money itself, which seems like a crazy moebius strip of waste.

[Colonel Panic]

[...]we have to factor in about $15-20k to pay our design team to actually design all this stuff, and to make it super-duper amazing and worth your money. those of you who supported mine and Neil’s last Kickstarter know what i’m talking about here. this CD is gonna be a super-deluxxxxxe work of art.
the neil and kyle books are going to cost us a LOT of dough to create…(edited after speaking with kyle) let’s say about $300/copy for about 100 copies…that’s 30k.

I also noticed she forgot to itemize $2.99 for a pack of Lady Bic razors.

Has anybody mentioned how disgustingly patronizing it is to call this project "Grand Theft Orchestra"? Like somehow, framing it as some kind of an inside joke makes it less tacky.

Not bad for a base publicity stunt, though.

[Adam Sr]

Out of interest, Steve, since you use your own example to denounce the kickstarting of artists' endeavours as a compromising of their independence, how do you square that with Tim's efforts to similarly raise money to pay off your studio's mortgage?

[Larry_Crane]

I do want to see someone fan-source a tour bus driver, sound person and catering.

[BadComrade]

Her breakdown of where the million dollars will go blows my fucking mind. The tiny part Col. Panic quoted above doesn't even come close to showing how absurd this woman's reasoning is.

Alright, I have to go start a kickstarter page right now to pay my sole employee and you know, get a new carpet for my record store because the old one has holes in it and, I know, I could just get cheap tile but do my customers really wanna walk around on a hard tile floor? Oh, maybe I should get wood floors with the name of the store inlaid in them right after you open the door. Oh, and I should do something about the lighting in here, it's kind of "harsh" and it would be great if I had a lighting designer come in here and change the lighting so the mood is more conducive to hanging out and spending money and, well I guess I should put in a bunch of listening stations and I don't want to use crappy headphones that take away from the experience of the music as it was intended to be heard by the artist so I'm going to have some of those expensive "Beats by Dre" headphones and I better get like 10 because you know that they are going to break eventually and well I guess I should hire a few more staff to change the light bulbs when they go out because I don't want the place to look weird once they start burning out and I guess I can employ some other people to "stage" product so the CDs on display are changing every day and it would be cool to have some sort of feng shui thing happening in here with the racks (sort of like how grocery stores rearrange all of their products on you every once in a while to keep you in the store longer looking for shit). Man that's gonna cost a lot of money I need all that stuff so my customers are happy when they come in here to give me money for stuff I'm selling it's totally gonna be worth it to enhance their customer experience. Oh I almost forgot I need a bunch of like $10 each burlap shopping bags that have the store logo silkscreened on them and I'm gonna need like 10,000 of those and I'm gonna have to pay someone to screen them and for the supplies and the shipping because I need all this stuff I can't just operate a regular store the market has changed and I have rent to pay.

[Boombats]

I do want to see someone fan-source a tour bus driver, sound person and catering.

I would be happy to do all three for a really sick band like Neurosis or something, as long as I do not have to provide gas, ass or grass.

[steve]

Out of interest, Steve, since you use your own example to denounce the kickstarting of artists' endeavours as a compromising of their independence, how do you square that with Tim's efforts to similarly raise money to pay off your studio's mortgage?

I like kickstarting of band endeavors for people who want to use it. I don't use it myself, that's all. I think Tim's gesture and the support it got were both humbling and extraordinarily generous, and evidence of great good will among peers.

[Maurice]

I do want to see someone fan-source a tour bus driver, sound person and catering.

"Oh, fan-sourced waiter? How long has this fan-sourced fois gras been sitting? I see. Please sear me a fan-sourced flank steak instead--rare. And please, another bottle of fan-sourced chablis."

[numberthirty]

[...]we have to factor in about $15-20k to pay our design team to actually design all this stuff, and to make it super-duper amazing and worth your money. those of you who supported mine and Neil’s last Kickstarter know what i’m talking about here. this CD is gonna be a super-deluxxxxxe work of art.
the neil and kyle books are going to cost us a LOT of dough to create…(edited after speaking with kyle) let’s say about $300/copy for about 100 copies…that’s 30k.

I also noticed she forgot to itemize $2.99 for a pack of Lady Bic razors.

Has anybody mentioned how disgustingly patronizing it is to call this project "Grand Theft Orchestra"? Like somehow, framing it as some kind of an inside joke makes it less tacky.

Not bad for a base publicity stunt, though.

This is where I have to disagree. I love David Mack's work. If other people who see he's involved want to pay so he can get paid, I don't see the big deal.

I've got the album. She didn't skimp on the packaging.

[Adam Sr]

Out of interest, Steve, since you use your own example to denounce the kickstarting of artists' endeavours as a compromising of their independence, how do you square that with Tim's efforts to similarly raise money to pay off your studio's mortgage?

I like kickstarting of band endeavors for people who want to use it. I don't use it myself, that's all. I think Tim's gesture and the support it got were both humbling and extraordinarily generous, and evidence of great good will among peers.

I think so too, but then I think all supporting of artists is humbling/generous/awesome, and I don't think asking for support is 'stooping', nor is it necessarily a compromise of self-sufficiency/independence, any more than Electrical would be compromised for Tim and the community's gesture.

Whether the above is true in the particular case of Amanda Palmer, I don't know, but it's clearly not necessarily true.