The art of asking Amanda Palmer
so I didn’t always make my living from
music for about the five years after
graduating from an upstanding liberal
arts university this was my day job I
was a self-employed living statue called
the eight-foot bride and I love telling
people I did this for a job because
everybody always wants to know who are
these freaks in real life hello
I painted myself white one day
stood on a box put a hat or a can at my
feet and when someone came by and
dropped in money I handed them a flower
and some intense eye contact and if they
didn’t take the flower I threw in a
gesture of sadness and longing as they
walked away
so I had the most profound encounters
with people especially lonely people who
looks like they hadn’t talked to anyone
in weeks and we would get this beautiful
moment of prolonged eye contact being
allowed in a city street and we would
sort of fall in love a little bit and my
eyes would say thank you I see you and
their eyes would say nobody ever sees me
thank you and I would get harassed
sometimes people would yell at me from
their passing cars get a job and I do
think this is my job but it hurt because
it made me fear that I was somehow doing
something on job like an unfair shameful
I had no idea how perfect a real
education I was getting for the music
business on this box and for The
Economist’s out there you may be
interested to know I actually made a
pretty predictable income which was
shocking to me given I had no regular
customers but pretty much 60 bucks on a
Tuesday 90 bucks on a Friday it was
consistent and meanwhile I was touring
locally and playing in nightclubs with
my band The Dresden Dolls this is me on
piano a genius drummer I wrote the songs
and eventually we started making enough
money that I could quit being statue and
as we started touring I really didn’t
want to lose this sense of direct
connection with people because I loved
it
so after all of our shows we would sign
autographs and hug fans and hang out and
talk to people and we made an art out of
asking people to help us and join us and
I would track down local musicians and
artists and they would set up outside of
our shows and they would pass the Hat
and then they would come in and join us
on stage so we had this rotating
smorgasbord of weird random circus
guests and then Twitter came along and
made things even more magic because I
could ask instantly
anything anywhere so I would need a
piano to practice on and an hour later I
would be at a fans house this is in
London people would bring home-cooked
food to us all over the world backstage
and feed us and eat with us this is in
Seattle fans who worked in museums and
stores and in any kind of public space
would wave their hands if I would decide
to do a last-minute spontaneous free gig
this is a library in Auckland on
Saturday I tweeted for this crate and
hat because I did not want to slept them
from the East Coast and they should have
care of this dude Chris from Newport
Beach who says hello I once tweeted
we’re in Melbourne can I buy a neti pot
and a nurse from a hospital drove one
right at that moment to the cafe I was
in and I bought her a smoothie and we
sat there talking about nursing and deaf
and I love this kind of random closeness
which is lucky because I do a lot of
couchsurfing in mansions where everyone
on my crew gets their own room but
there’s no wireless and in Punk squats
everyone on the floor in one room with
no toilets but with wireless clearly
making it a better option
my crew once pulled our van up to a
really poor Miami neighborhood and we
found out that our couchsurfing host for
the night was an 18 year old girl still
living at home
and her family were all undocumented
immigrants from Honduras and that night
her whole family took the couches and
she slept together with her mom so that
we could take their beds and I lay there
thinking these people have so little is
this fair and in the morning her mom
taught us how to try to make tortillas
and wanted to give me a Bible and she
took me aside and she said to me and her
broken English your music I had hoped my
daughter so much thank you for staying
here we’re all so grateful and I thought
this is fair this is this a couple
months later I was in Manhattan and I
tweeted for a crash pad and at midnight
I’m ringing a doorbell on the Lower East
Side and it occurs to me I’ve never
actually done this alone I’ve always
been with my band or my crew is this
what stupid people do is this how stupid
people die and before I can change my
mind the door busts open she’s an artist
he’s a financial blogger for Reuters and
they’re pouring me a glass of red wine
and offering me a bath and I have had
thousands of nights like that and like
that
so I couch-surf a lot I also crowd-surf
a lot I maintain couchsurfing and
crowd-surfing are basically the same
thing you’re falling into the audience
and you’re trusting each other I once
asked an opening band of mine if they
wanted to go out into the crowd and pass
the Hat to get themselves some extra
money something that I did a lot and as
usual the band was psyched but there was
this one guy in the band who told me he
just couldn’t bring himself to go out
there it felt too much like begging to
stand there with the Hat and I
recognized his fear of it’s this fare
and get a job and meanwhile my band is
becoming bigger and bigger we signed
with a major label and our music is
across between Punk and cabaret it’s not
for everybody but well maybe it’s for
you we sign and our there’s all this
hype leading up to our next record and
it comes out and it sells about 25,000
copies in the first few weeks and the
label considers this failure and I was
like 25,000 isn’t that a lot they’re
like no the sales are going down it’s a
failure and they walk off right at the
same time I’m signing and hugging after
a gig and a guy comes up to me enhanced
me a $10 bill and says I’m sorry I
burned your CD from a friend
I but I read your blog I know you hate
your label I just want you to have this
money and this starts happening all the
time
I become the Hat after my own gigs but I
have to physically stand there and take
the help from people and unlike the guy
in the opening band I’ve actually had a
lot of practice standing there thank you
and this is the moment I decide I’m just
gonna give away my music for free online
whenever possible so it’s like Metallica
over here Napster bad Amanda Palmer over
here and I’m gonna encourage torrenting
downloading sharing but I’m gonna ask
for help because I saw work on the
street so I fought my way off my label
and for my next projects with my new
band the grand theft Orchestra
I turned to crowdfunding and I fell into
those thousands of connections that I’d
made and I asked my crowd to catch me
and the goal was $100,000 my fans back
to me at nearly 1.2 million which was
the biggest music crowdfunding project
today
and you can see how many people it is
it’s about 25,000 people and the media
asked Amanda the music business is
tanking and you encourage piracy how did
you make all these people pay for music
and the real answer is I didn’t make
them I asked them and through the very
act of asking people I’d connected with
them and when you connect with them
people want to help you it’s kind of
counterintuitive for a lot of artists
they don’t want to ask for things but
it’s not it’s not easy it’s not easy to
ask and a lot of artists have a problem
with this asking makes you vulnerable
and I got a lot of criticism online
after my Kickstarter win big for
continuing my crazy crowdsourcing
practices specifically for asking
musicians who are fans if they wanted to
join us on stage for a few songs in
exchange for love and tickets and beer
and this was a doctored image that went
up of me on a website and this hurt in a
really familiar way people saying you’re
not allowed anymore to ask for that kind
of help really reminded me of the people
in their cars yelling get a job because
they weren’t with us on the sidewalk and
they couldn’t see the exchange that was
happening between me and my crowd an
exchange that was very fair to us but
alien to them this is slightly
not-safe-for-work this is my Kickstarter
backer party in Berlin at the end of the
night I stripped and let everyone draw
on me now let me tell you if you want to
experience the visceral feeling of
trusting strangers
I recommend this especially if those
strangers are drunk German people this
was a ninja master level fan connection
because what I was really saying here
was I trust you this much should I show
me for most of human history musicians
artists they’ve been part of the
community connectors and and openers not
untouchable stars celebrity is about a
lot of people loving you from a distance
but the Internet and the content that
we’re freely able to share on it or
taking us back it’s about a few people
loving you up close and about those
people being enough so a lot of people
are confused by the idea of no hard
sticker price they see it as an
unpredictable risk but the things I’ve
done the Kickstarter the street the
doorbell I don’t see these things as
risk I see them as trust now the online
tools to make the exchange as easy and
as instinctive as the street they’re
getting there but the perfect tools
aren’t gonna help us if we can’t face
each other and give and receive
fearlessly but more important to ask
without shame my music career has been
spent trying to encounter people on the
Internet the way I could on the box so
blogging and tweeting not just about my
tour dates and my new video but about
our work and our art and our fears our
hangovers our mistakes and we see each
other and I think when we really see
each other we want to help each other I
think people have been obsessed with the
wrong question which is how do we make
people pay for music what if we started
asking how do we let people pay for
music
thank you