I am so very proud of Amanda…
She’s in the last seven hours of her Kickstarter. She’s got a warchest to make and promote her CD, to film videos, to go on tour, to print her art book. And just importantly, she’s changed things: her phone is ringing off the hook with calls from The Economist, Spin, The Wall Street Journal, Music Week, The New York Times and so on, all asking her what this means for the future of music distribution.
I’ve watched how hard she’s worked to put this together over the last four years, experimenting, doing trial runs on things, putting a team together that would be able to deliver everything she wanted.
About six months ago we wound up at dinner with Amanda’s touring people in Melbourne, and at the dinner was an old school music manager — he’s been managing supergroups for forty years. And he asked Amanda what label she was on. When she said she’d left her label and wasn’t ever planning to go back, I expected him to say something dismissive, and instead he said “Good!” and started telling us about how he was working to get his various acts off their record labels and out selling their music directly to the public.
I (obviously, but it needs saying) don’t think it’s going to be like this for everyone. You need a fanbase to make it happen, and you have to build the fans before they will support you. But I do think it changes things. Because it’s much more than she would ever have received from a record label to record or promote her music, and everyone who is supporting her is getting something in return, down to a $1 download of the finished album.
I don’t believe that in five years time every album will be Kickstartered (the signal to noise level on Kickstarter alone would be impossible to manage). But we’re entering a time in which everything changes. And I think that’s a good thing.
And like she says: We did it. Not her. We are the media.
We’ve reached the last four days of Amanda’s Kickstarter.
Over the last almost-a-month of the Kickstarter she’s got a huge amount of support, set records, made the news, and is now planning a giant webcast block party in Brooklyn on Thursday night for the people who supported her and to count down to 11:59 when the Kickstarter ends.
She’s good for supporters, and she’s already well exceeded her goal and is somewhere off into her wildest dreams. (As I write this she’s 888% funded.) But I still thought I’d stick something up here, in the last few days, because…
We put together the Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer Kickstarter last year, to raise the money to professionally record the West Coast tour we did in November. We raised a lot more money from the Kickstarter than we had expected, so we made everything we could even better than anyone had expected. The double CD we had talked about became a beautiful triple CD package, for example, and then we did a special super secret bonus CD with a banana on it to go along with that - along with over two hours of extra material we released digitally for all the supporters. We worked very hard to make sure that everyone who supported us got something better than they thought they were getting.
And when the stuff started showing upin people’s mailboxes and they started posting happy photographs of their stuff (like these…)
…then people here and on Twitter started sending me sad messages, telling me they wished they had supported the Kickstarter, they’d missed it as they hadn’t seen it, or had forgotten, or were broke at the time — but was it too late to get the stuff? I wrote back a lot, and said yes, I was sorry but it was too late. We’d only made enough for the Kickstarter backers.
Amanda will be releasing a version of her new CD to the public in September. That’s the one you’ll be able to buy at your local store. But the two CD set inside a book, or the quadruple vinyl in its box, or whatever else she decides to throw in to the other levels — that stuff will only exist for Kickstarter. If you want it, or any of the other rewards (down to the $1 reward that gets you the album digitally when it comes out, which will be significantly cheaper than it’ll be on iTunes) then this is really just a reminder that you only have four days…
Amanda Palmer’s latest project update gets real. Really real: “Here’s some very back-of-the-napkin costs to manufacture the goods, with a rough estimate of about what we’d have sold if we got to a million.”
Transparency has always been a hallmark of a well-run Kickstarter project, and while nobody is surprised to see Palmer hitting the home-run of all cost-breakdown-project-updates, we are still really psyched about it. Plus, this:ONE…we are committed to doing amazing things for all of you who pledged. sure, it’s going to cost more to make things extra fancy (and for us to ship things for FREE all over the world), but making this stuff amazing IS THE POINT. if i skimped on making the packaging and actual products INCREDIBLE, i’d be an idiot.
Three cheers, lady.
It’s nice that they have noticed that she is the “best new thing in the world today” on MSNBC.
I have been thinking that for four years now.
There’s a great story about how bamboo grows. A farmer plants a bamboo shoot underground, and waters and tends it for about three years. Nothing grows that’s visible, but the farmer trots out there, tending to this invisible thing with a certain amount of faith that things are going to work out. When the bamboo finally appears above ground, it can shoot up to thirty feet in a month. This is like my kickstarter campaign. The numbers aren’t shocking to me, not at all. I set the goal for the kickstarter at $100,000 hoping we’d make it quickly, and hoping we’d surpass it by a long-shot.
I’ve been tending this bamboo forest of fans for years and years, ever since leaving roadrunner records in 2009. Every person I talk to at a signing, every exchange I have online (sometimes dozens a day), every random music video or art gallery link sent to me by a fan that i curiously follow, every strange bed I’ve crashed on…all of that real human connecting has led to this moment, where I came back around, asking for direct help with a record. Asking EVERYBODY. Asking my poor fans to give a dollar, or if nothing else, to spread the link; asking my rich fans to loan me money at whatever level they can afford to miss it for a while.
And they help because they know I’m good for it. Because they KNOW me.
— Amanda Palmer talks about her KICKSTARTER (now over $545,000 raised, and incidentally it’s only a dollar for a digital download of the next album) on Techdirt.In Defense of Expensive Things
The only thing I’d clarify here is that the book doesn’t “cost” $1000. The book is a reward that you get, along with all the goodies you get at the levels below it, at the $1000 level (or above). They could have made it a reward at the $500 level or the $5000 level. It’s a reward, a thank-you and an incentive, for supporting the Kickstarter. But beyond that, everything Kyle said. And if you wish to be part of the comments, they are over at his livejournal.
Reposted from blog.kylecassidy.com
So after much preparation and planning and plotting, my friend and occasional co-conspirator Amanda Palmer launched a Kickstarter this week to fund her new album, Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra. She was asking for $100,000 to do this, press, mixing, promotion, etc. And we all knew that she’d get it. It’s Amanda Freaking Palmer for crying out loud, she sold an empty wine bottle for $300 once. This isn’t unusual.
There are a few things that are unusual though. One is that she raised half a million dollars in two days and another somewhat unusual thing is that one of the Kickstarter rewards is a book by Neil & myself featuring photos that illustrate one of the songs and that this book costs … one thousand dollars a copy. That’s a one with three zeros and it’s not a joke. After this happened my inbox started filling up with mail that is on the cusp between “very angry” and “bewildered” - one person writes “I feel like you have sold out art by catering to people who can spend this kind of money,” another says (somewhat cryptically) “artists I used to care about, meh,” It’s obvious that people feel very strongly about this and I wanted to address some of these questions because it bothers me when people are upset.
Firstly, in the name of full disclosure I should point out a few things: I had little to do with the pricing of the book, apart from saying “I think it will be very expensive to make a book like this” and providing some layouts, I’m not sure if they’ll use mine or not; I don’t get a cut of the book sales, but I will get paid for whatever photo work I do for the album, and it’ll be better than I got paid when I did an album cover when Amanda was on a major label, so it’s a general pool sort of thing and I have a vested interest, plus I genuinely do want to see Amanda make mad gobs for money as a reward for her incredible talent. If you ask me, she should be able to bask in luxury for the rest of her life for Delilah alone.
This is probably the biggest thing, so I’ll say it first:
1) The album, the music, the thing that this is all about is a dollar I’ll say that again you can download the album for a dollar. The goal of this project is to get music to people and people can get it for less than the price of a cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts. One of the reasons that you can download the album for a dollar is because the people who are paying $1,000 for a limited edition book are subsidizing the cost of the album download.
2) I don’t know if my photos are going to be in the $100 art book — my guess is probably or at least some of thembut I don’t know.
3) The buyers get to set the price of items sometimes. This is the way the free market works. Someone puts out a book for a thousand dollars, nobody buys it, the seller eats the production costs and learns a valuable lesson. Just because you want something priced in a particular way doesn’t mean that it will be, or that it should be. Picketing Chevrolet and saying “I want a $3,000 Corvette” won’t get you a $3,000 Corvette, though it will convince Pontiac to produce the Firebird. Vote with your wallet.
4) Some people have more money than you, they buy things too. Some people have less money than you; they think it’s crazy that you’d spend $2.60 on a cup of coffee.
5) $1,000 isn’t as obscene a price as you may think. $1,000 wouldn’t get me a print from any of my favorite photographers — Mary Ellen Mark, Anne Liebovitz, Sally Mann, their photos start at $1,200.
6) Don’t you dare dare dare say “her husband is rich, she doesn’t need to make money”. Do I really need to say this?
7) If you don’t want a $1,000 book, don’t buy it. If you want to see the photos, they’ll be at a number of exhibitions along the way. And on top of that:
8) Someone will probably bootleg this book. If you’re dying to see it, you very likely will, the pages might be in the wrong order and the images may look fuzzy, but I suspect it’ll get out.
9) I’ve got a ton of photos that you can buy for $10 and you probably haven’t.
10) This album isn’t worth half a million dollars. This kickstarter transaction isn’t between you and the amount of money it’s raised, it’s between you and the reward you’ve chosen. Do you want the reward the kickstarter is offering? That’s it. Kickstarter isn’t a charity website where people ask for money to do nothing — kickstarter provides tangable rewards for people funding art projects. You pay money, you get something back. If people want to pay a dollar and get an album, they do, if they want to pay a thousand dollars and get a limited edition book, they do. It’s not an open guitar case on a street corner. Just because someone’s made some amount of money doesn’t make your reward for backing less valuable. The only question is is this reward worth the money they’re asking for it?.
11) Amanda Palmer works harder than almost anyone I know. She keeps a relentless schedule, she’s away from her family for months at a time, and she’s almost single handedly re-formed the musician/fan relationship in the past eight years. I realized this long ago when I saw her at a concert say to the audience “take out your cell phones, right now, and text your email address to this number. That way I can get in touch with you directly, without the record company in between us.” It was a simple thing, but it was extremely important. She’s worked hard for your money.
12) Buy something rare and exclusive, it’s wonderful. It doesn’t have to be a $1,000 art book, it can be a $3 painting. Put it in a corner in your house that people have to stumble upon to see. When you throw a party and see someone standing in front of it tell them the story “I bought this three years ago at an art show in Pawtucket, the artists name was Eugene….” That’s exactly what the person with the $1,000 limited edition art book is going to be doing, and it won’t be any less wonderful for you when you do it. I promise that.
This is the story of someone doing something right, working hard for years, being clever, inventing a new way in an old world. I’m happy to be a part of it; thousand dollar book and all.
All the artist, writer, photographer friends I have always say “never read the comments” — because invariably when there’s some great article about something you’re doing in the New York Times three comments in someone’s calling you an idiot. It comes with the territory. For whatever percentage of people think you’re doing great things, there’s a percentage, fixed in space, who think you should be welded into a barrel and buried in a nuclear waste dump. I wish it wasn’t like that, but if you pleased everyone you probably wouldn’t be doing things right.
Sure she’s got half a million dollars, but you can still get the album for a dollar, I’m going to.
If you have thoughts — angry or not, I’d like to hear them; I am, despite the best advice of my friends, reading comments.
If you’re one of the people looking at her Kickstarter money with stars in your eyes and awesome plans of your own in your head, ask yourself first: Have you put in the time? Earned the credibility? Scoped out the financial balance sheet? Made the commitment to fulfill every single thing you have promised?
Palmer has. If you haven’t — on any of this — be aware that your results, shall we say, may vary. — John Scalzi explains the ups and downs and behind-the-scenes of how you do a successful Kickstarter and what the money means. Whether you’re interested in Amanda’s Kickstarter or not, this one should be required reading for anybody interested in how it works, what it is, and what you want to do if you want the same results…
I just got out of bed, and snuck over to the computer, and supported Amanda’s Kickstarter.
(Happy Birthday, darling.)
Watch the video. It will tell you everything about Amanda, that you could ever want to know. Also, it’s really sweet and funny.
willpluffindaily asked: I ship you and Amanda so hard, will you please just fucking live together already? your countdown posts kill me. Much love.
I don’t know that we ever will. We have sort of living together plans when she gets off the road in 2013, but we LOVE being apart almost as much as we love being together.
The three months thing was much too long. (I think anything over three weeks apart is too long.) But I’m loving being home alone right now, and not having to pay attention to anyone except the dogs. I got home this evening, I fixed the house wifi, and walked the dogs, and phoned a few people, and did things on my own, and am really looking forward to sleeping alone for the first time in ten days. I can read as long as I want to, or even write in bed until I fall asleep, which I can’t do if someone is trying to sleep beside me…
And Amanda’s back in Boston tonight for the first time in four months, and am not even expecting to hear from her until around Tuesday. And then I’ll see her on Friday, and we’ll get about five days together.
I cherish the time apart, and I cherish the time together.
I suspect that when we do actually get somewhere for both of us to live, it will have two wings, or rooms, or be two places next door to each other, or across the street. With some places in common, and some places we can be alone.
(We have completely different theories of what should be in a kitchen, for a start.)
There aren’t any rules to this thing, other than what we make up, anyway. I married someone fiercely independent, except when she wants to not be alone, and am myself rather happy to be on my own, except when I’m not.
For those of you wondering how your daily moment of Amanda countdown was going to end…
It ends like this, in a hotel, about to go to a wedding, with Amanda practicing the song she’s going to play them.
And it ends with me seeing my wife for the first time in a hundred days. It was awkward, a bit tentative, yesterday. And today it’s really easy and comfortable.
