Why I Can't Stand Amanda Palmer as a Human Being

It's been eight months since my last update here, which coincidentally was a review of an Amanda Palmer show.  Since then, her got to do a TED talk on her crowd funding artistic lifestyle.  I've seen it linked everywhere and praised to the heavens all over the place.  And each time, I glared angrily at my news feed but said nothing, because who goes starting shit on other people's news feed?  Well if you give me five dollars up front, I'll tell you why I think Amanda's business model sucks for music.  You'll receive a thanks at the end of my rant and a sticker valued at fifty cents. 

If you're not aware what all the fuss was about, Amanda Palmer did a Kickstarter to crowd fund her new album.  Fan support was overwhelming, and she made what I would describe as a fuckton of money.  Over a million dollars.  So far, so good.  The controversy came when it came out that Amanda Palmer was soliciting volunteer musicians to play on her tour dates.  She claimed that, despite making 10 times the Kickstarter goal, she simply could not afford to actually pay her musicians.  Steve Albini had one of the more notable rants. 

I'm not saying that Amanda Palmer is an idiot or mismanaged her funds like Albini.  I think she managed them just the way she wanted to.  And I think it's terrible for music, art, and whatever tatters of value labor still holds in this country. 

The new face of anti-labor aristocracy

So we see that Amanda Palmer is able to get quality - and they were quality, she had them doing audition tapes and everything - performers on a volunteer basis. Because no one gets paid other than Amanda, these musicians are either giving up paying gigs or hobbyists to take this job. Thus, these are people who can afford to give out their services for free, and considering music is a notoriously hard profession to get by in, that's a small subset of the professional music community. And poor people are the people who need not apply. Anyone who wants to go out on tour with Amanda in the future has to justify their paycheck against someone willing to do the same work, of similar quality, free. If you were Amanda, who would you take?

So there go like five or six touring jobs a year and the average salary for musicians decreases just a little bit. But that's really not the end of it. Say Sir Paul McCartney reads an article on this, and he says "Well that's brilliant! If I do this, I don't have to split any of my take of the door money! I'll make like $2 million a show." So Paul McCartney starts soliciting volunteers.

Yeah, you'd still pay to play with him.

Paul McCartney's ad hits the internet, and well, what musician WOULDN'T want to play with Sir Paul, arguably the most beloved musician on the face of the planet. He would have a line of very talented musicians a mile long signing up to play his gigs. Because people would literally pay to play with Paul McCartney. And then top tier studio musicians have to compete with the rate of free. And the average earnings of professional musicians who aren't already megastars again drops.

Prince notices. Sting notices. Madonna notices. Lady Gaga notices. Paul Simon, Herbie Hancock, Bruno Mars, Ceelo Green, Katy Perry, etc etc. Suddenly the lifestyle of the working gigging professional musician no longer exists. They're competing against competent amateurs willing to work for free - there's no way they're making a living wage anymore. You're a megastar or you're not a professional musician. The only people who can now afford to make music are the ones who are not financially dependent on it.

Congrats, Amanda. You just destroyed the lives and hopes and dreams of millions of musicians everywhere. You've made it impossible for us to find the next Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, or, fuck, Amanda Palmer.  You've made music into fucking polo.

In Amanda's world, this is all Hendricks would have had to eat.

I hope you're right well pleased with yourself, Amanda. Maybe next time you'd think to pay your musicians a little extra for the work and time and knowledge that they give you, and instead make the lives of musicians everywhere just a little bit better.

For the record, Amanda is married to a man whose net worth is estimated at $20 million. She could have funded this album out of pocket. Neil could have given it to her as a birthday gift. Or a "happy Tuesday, we're rich" present.  It's why even the initial kickstarter just reeked of exploitation to me. There are people who actually need Kickstarter to get their dreams off the ground. Amanda needed Kickstarter because why pay for things your much less well off fanbase will give you for free?  Why take the financial risk when she can just ask her fans to take it for her?  She doesn't just crowd source her musicians and production budget; she applies this same ethos to accommodations, couch surfing in her fan's living rooms (see the TED talk), giving them the gift of her presence, when she has more than enough money to afford a bus / hotel / pay her fans for their accommodations.

Amanda's no folk hero. She's a woman of means living off the back of her fans for no other reason than because she can.