Kickstarter is a way to raise funds for an album you can't otherwise get funding for. I have no philosophical problems with this personally, and I'm going to be donating to a Kickstarter project soon. Well... once I get clarity on one point: Who gets the money because the way Kickstarter works if your target is $30000 and you don't get pledges to that amount you get nothing. So do Kickstarter keep the money in such case?
OK... so the story goes that one Amanda Palmer, who does have a bit of a history and a career in the music biz, sought $100000 on Kickstarter to record a new album. She got $1.2 million. So woohoo and good luck to her.
Things started going bad when she went on the road and looked for
string and horn players to back her for free (well, beer and hugs) at each show. This was to supplement her band. The idea being to pickup 7 players in each city they were playing in, rehearse them, do the show and then repeat at each gig.
Which was when things spun out of control.
Musicians who didn't know Amanda Palmer from a bar of soap wrote back to her blog telling her that if musicians were good enough to play for her they were good enough to be paid by her. Unions got involved. Steve Albini opined on the matter.
Palmer has since changed her policy and now pays the pick-up musicians. We don't know how much, but cash changes hands.
This article in the New Yorker examines some of the issues around this matter, and bigger issues like how exactly do people find money to make records these days (Palmer is by no means the first to go this route; Linda Thompson was looking for money to make an album 3 or 4 years ago - it hasn't happened).
Palmer gives a break down of her financial position RE the album and the tour
here.
I'll add that for a musician who didn't have money to make an album this seems like a pretty ambitious tour. Herself, her band, a hired horn duo, the "extra seven", light shows, costumes, an art exhibition in every town they play in (which means schlepping all the works of art around, which isn't going to cost nothing). It doesn't add up to $1.2 million, but then she hasn't included everything in the breakdown - EG the cost of actually making the album.
It's easy to get on the hate horse about Amanda Palmer. I see bigger issues here. A lot of people are struggling to make ends meet in the music biz these days, and quite frankly I wonder why some of them bother (though I am thankful that they do). Richard Thompson (yes, I know I always use him as an example, but he's the one guy I follow really closely) says that he makes money on solo tours (though he takes his own sound guy to every show, and the sound guy has to be paid and that also means doubling up on all travel related costs) and just about breaks even when he goes out on the road with the band. Is it worth it if you break even? Maybe you could play some sessions instead of touring? His last album was recorded on the road. He thought it would be cheaper and the album would feel more exciting if he played the whole thing live and recorded it. They did an eight show tour, recording every show and most of the album came from the last three shows. Cost? About the same as going into a studio.
When I saw Martin Simpson recently there were - wait for it - eighty six people in the audience. 15 quid a ticket and there's still a hall to be paid for, a promoter, a sound guy. This is not a big money game. Admittedly the promoter did tell me that 86 was pretty good for that venue at that time of year, but what happens if Simpson starts playing only venues where he knows he can get an audience of a certain size and make a known set of money per gig? At that point the audience starts losing out too.
Simpson, BTW, tops up his live earnings with guitar clinics, selling transcripts of his recording and so on. Thompson has started doing the same. I have read other reports of quite well-regarded artists taking on commission work like writing songs for people's weddings. I've heard Laurie Levine singing an advert on TV. Joshua Grierson has had to take a job at Exclusive Books to keep body and soul together.
Musicians with long careers and multiple album releases are struggling. Peter Case is one example. Dave Alvin is another. They survive - as long as they don't get sick. Case got majorly sick (needed heart surgery) and ended up in considerable financial trouble. (British musicians are in a bit of a better place whilst the National Health is still a going concern. When Norma Waterson fell seriously ill she got into an NHS hospital, but she was unable to perform for over a year and had unfulfilled gig commitments that she had to make good on.)
Back to Palmer.
One critic has suggested that either she is being economical with the truth regarding her costs or she just doesn't know what she's doing. Not all musicians are good business people or keep their piggy bank stuffed (whilst in Spain I read an interview with Pete Townshend who reveals that Keith Moon, shortly before his death, was broke).
Steve Albini seems to have a) spoken hastily initially and then (b) been quoted out of context by various newspapers.
A later statement by him also suggests that, in his opinion, Amanda Palmer didn't handle the money very well.
One contribution to the situation that Palmer finds herself in may have been that her Kickstarter campaign was too successful. At a certain level of contribution you could get a house concert - well she's got 35 of those to do now. Maybe she didn't think this out very well... right from the start she was planning on the art gallery aspect of the tour.
One last point. Musicians need to make a minimum amount of money, either from their musical activities or from having a second revenue stream (like a job). The New Yorker says this...
the pricing question gets far more compelling if we understand it as putting a value on Palmer’s own creative capacity. How do we value that, when the market—the very mechanism that we rely upon to set value—has imploded, and most anyone can listen to a new album for free? What happens to art, be it Amanda Palmer’s or Azealia Banks’s (or Thomas Pynchon’s or Kathryn Bigelow’s), when people can get it for free without facing arrest? Or, to put it more starkly, what is the fate of art after private property is done away with? Will people keep making it? Will they keep reproducing, marketing, and distributing it?
